Burning Trees To Generate Electricity
A reader sent me this recent article by legendary environmentalist Bill McKibben. In passing it along, he notes: Craig, it appears that “Green” can become a kind of dogma so that if something is given a green coat of paint it must be “good.” What the article is saying is that just because we tend to agree with a direction or an idea we should not suspend a critical approach.
He’s absolutely correct. As McKibben shows us once again, one of the truly great aspects of his writing is that he makes bold and unassailable points that are enormous in scope.
Here, he explores the notion that profit-oriented business ideas in cleantech tend to take on lives of their own, and that those lives can outlast the utility of the ideas themselves. We all need to be able to change our viewpoints when we’re visited with new facts on the matter at hand, but, unfortunately, the profit motive often works counter to this principle.
The poster child for this, of course, is corn ethanol, an industry that, as we’ve come to learn over the past decade or so, is having a net negative effect on the environment—yet it remains a booming enterprise nonetheless.
People say that combusting biomass is an environmentally friendly concept, in that it’s carbon neutral; the carbon that is released by burning trees, in this case, is reabsorbed when new trees are planted to replace the old ones. Accordingly, a huge industry of growing and processing trees for wood pellets is plowing (literally) along like a juggernaut, and appears unstoppable.
Here, McKibben shows his unique ability to point out the obvious: we’re releasing the carbon now, and hoping to remove it later. We can’t afford to be adding carbon to the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, clear thinking and making money do not always walk hand-in-hand.
Bill McKibben seems to take on a courageous challenge with this concise yet, carefully reasoned article. We all seem to have cherished ideas and approaches about the environment. Like ethanol, what seemed viable yesterday may not look so good when more evidence is added. It is well worth the read.
McKibben is also challenging his friends and neighbors to keep an open mind so that it may be possible to come to some consensus and avoid bickering and infighting.
He reminds us that we became sucked into the crisis of global warming because of the pursuit of profits over concerns about the environment. Non viable, seemingly green, options can participate in the same philosophical mistake.
With respect to wood burning and a commercial industry, he has an interesting point about releasing all the carbon in a tree at once and it then taking years for new trees to sequester more carbon.
However if an individual wanted to burn wood for home heating in a more environmentally sound way they might adopt techniques that are more traditional in Europe than in the US:
1st, use masonry stoves rather than cast iron. These burn at a much higher temperature for only a portion of the day and the heat is retained by the stove and serpentine masonry flue to be radiated into the dwelling over the course of the day. Think pizza oven with a long tail. (Unfortunately, old houses with such stoves often have them removed because they take up so much room)
2ed, such stoves use small brush rather than large logs. In the middle ages trees were prepared by cutting them off. The sprouts from the stump (or later trees left cut off at about 5 to 6 feet to keep them out of the way) were harvested every few years. In this way the carbon that was burned could be a local seasonal crop.
This essentially comes from a small book I once read on Masonry Stoves at a friends house while visiting. It may have been this one but it was some time ago: https://www.amazon.com/Masonry-Heaters-Designing-Building-Living/dp/1603582134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473386659&sr=8-1&keywords=masonry+stoves#reader_1603582134