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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Drax is huge, and now burns canadian imported wood rather than coal which is was built for because it can be considered carbon-free.

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Farmed wood should actually be considered carbon neutral. Other than transportation cost and the carbon emitted during harvesting, it’s a legitimate way of capturing carbon from the atmosphere and then just emitting the same carbon back

The problem is that at this point we need to be actually capturing carbon and not re-emitting it.

Capturing carbon is literally a fantasy. Other than growing forests there is no hope we can invent a technological way out of our carbon emissions by capturing them. Companies which promise otherwise are essentially a scam.

And growing forests is a viable option but the problem is that the carbon is only captured for as long as you don't burn the wood or let it rot, it has to be either buried or turned into things which ultimately won't release their CO2 back into the air.

If we can increase our CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere we can become carbon neutral faster as increased concentrations drive forest growth and allow plants to grow in previously desert regions.

Grow a forest, convert the wood into charcoal, then store it in a salt mine.

Converting to charcoal is pointless, just burry biomass which is how we got fossil fuels in the first place.

A dump beats every commonly proposed method of carbon sequestration because people pay you to take it and all you need to do is prevent that carbon from entering the atmosphere.

Farmed wood shouldn’t be considered carbon neutral as there’s transportation and other factors to include

Plus we should avoid burning captured carbon

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