Posted on 07/10/2021 8:31:19 PM PDT by rktman
CNN published an interesting story today about European environmentalism and the law of unintended consequences. It’s a lengthy story but the core of it is that back in 2009 the European Union embraced a plan (the Renewable Energy Directive) to reduced its reliance on fossil fuels and instead depend on renewable energy sources. In most people’s minds that would refer to solar panels, windmills and maybe hydroelectric power. But one of the sources specifically cited in the document was biomass, i.e. wood pellets. The European Union reasoned that the burning of woodpellets was better than the burning of coal since trees can be regrown. While that’s true, trees definitely aren’t carbon-neutral in the same way that other renewable sources are.
To say cutting down trees and burning them for power is a renewable energy source feels counterintuitive and, in reality, it is.
Burning wood is less efficient than burning coal and releases far more carbon into the atmosphere, according to almost 800 scientists who wrote a 2018 letter to the European parliament, pushing members to amend the current directive “to avoid expansive harm to the world’s forests and the acceleration of climate change.” President Joe Biden and other world leaders received a similar letter from hundreds of climate scientists earlier this year.
The EU directive that encouraged the pivot to biomass also left a loophole — it did not prevent the leveling of rooted trees for wood pellet production.
“I can’t think of anything that harms nature more than cutting down trees and burning them,” said William Moomaw, professor emeritus of international environmental policy at Tufts University.
Yet by burning wood, European power plants can reduce their carbon footprint — at least on paper.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
LOL! All the environmental weenies scream and cry at us Alaskans that burn wood for heat. PM 2.5! They cry.
Oil is biomass.
It seems that, if biomass is allowed to be used than oil should be used.
Happening here already. Check youtube to Planet of the Humans. It’s Michael Moore but it shows how every form of alt energy is even worse than fossil fuels.
Do you replant the tree you burn?
LOL!
I think Michael Moore, of all people, pointed out this scam.
So the lobbyists that sold the EU on this loophole own the pellet plants ?
I’m guessing there’s something more going on here than just stupidity.
Looking at this as an environmental event is so stupid, it isn’t even within reality. The renuables were only at 12%. And we are a fuel rich country using at 88%. World wide it is 84%.
But let’s take a look at what countries produce for themselves to survive.
The success of some countries is dependent on oil sales. Countries where fuel accounts for more than 90% of total exports include Algeria, Azerbaijan, Brunei Darussalam, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Sudan and Venezuela. If their oil production sales is cut, they literally go hungry. And the countries most dependent on oil sales are Kuwait, Libya, Saudi, and Iraq. All packed in a small area that is ripe to burst open with war if they get hungry. And we are heading in that direction.
In early December 2018, during he Trump administration, it was reported that the US had turned into a net exporter of oil thus breaking nearly 75 continuous years of dependence on foreign oil. Reportedly, the US sold overseas a net of 211,000 barrels a day of crude and refined products such as gasoline and diesel. But with Biden shutting down oil starts on the left coast and other public lands, cutting ANWR, shutting down the Keystone.
And to further hamper oil production he has eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels, stop maintaining shipping lanes on rivers so oil could be moved, the percentage depletion tax break, which allows independent producers to recover development costs of declining oil gas and coal reserves even though the administration is causing them, and by reversing the Trump Administration’s rollback on methane regulations Biden is cutting the throat of the oil industry in the US and will effect countries throughout the world with our lack of exports. He is making every effort to lower us to a third world nation.
Wy69
Well, Biomass is a very tricky thing.
There is a lot of commercially useless wood, products of forest management (thinning) and lumber operations (e.g. branches). That stuff needs to be disposed and the best is to burn it.
Garbage could also be burned. They used to call that itineration, but it became bad word.
I call it a “good biomass” to burn.
That used to be done before the global warming frenzy. Actually, it used to be done a lot more then, before the enviros started protecting the trees and drove lumberjacks out of business.
However, with immerse demands for “green” energy, people started commercially grow whole forests to burn. Giant acreages of young, fast growing trees just to burn as biomass.
It is actually cheaper to grow these forests than gather all that “good biomass” so lot of “good biomass” which could be burned is sitting in forests rotting and waiting to catch fire, while biomass operations are clear cutting biomass forests.
Government regulations have unintended consequences!
MORE EVIDENCE OF THE USELESSNESS OF “GREEN” ENERGY
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/07/more-evidence-of-the-uselessness-of-green-energy.php
You will not believe this!
These “climageddonist assclowns” are just finishing what Hitler, Stalin, Islamic extremists and Social Democrats started, i.e. the end of Europe as we know it.
Speak Russian, comrade Frenchies, Heinies, Italianos, Greek freaks, Spanish fools, Dutch drug advocates, and the geographically poorly situated Baltic/Scandinavian countries.
Some of us tried to warn you about your stupidity but your “historical and cultural” superiority complex got in the way of clear-headed thinking and now you’re declining faster than we are.
Enjoy Gazprom and other Russian energy lifelines that can be cut off in an instance while Russian hackers shut down your whole energy grid and you freeze to death.
I understand in some parts of Germany, France and England there are now more mosques that churches. So much for the Crusades. Enjoy your coming Marxist or Islamic chains. You have earned them, you stupid, cowardly bastards.
That news came as a big shock to a lot of people - including me - so, I will speculate that the Extreme Greens, in the USA and Europe, have put a decisive end to that once mutually profitable industry.
The next question is where are they getting trees from. Trees are practically and in some cases a protected class in Europe.
Do the trees self ID as moose-limbs?
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