Posted on 09/10/2022 5:53:23 PM PDT by Drew68
Governments bet billions on burning timber for green power. The Times went deep into one of the continent’s oldest woodlands to track the hidden cost.
Burning wood was never supposed to be the cornerstone of the European Union’s green energy strategy.
When the bloc began subsidizing wood burning over a decade ago, it was seen as a quick boost for renewable fuel and an incentive to move homes and power plants away from coal and gas. Chips and pellets were marketed as a way to turn sawdust waste into green power.
Those subsidies gave rise to a booming market, to the point that wood is now Europe’s largest renewable energy source, far ahead of wind and solar.
But today, as demand surges amid a Russian energy crunch, whole trees are being harvested for power. And evidence is mounting that Europe’s bet on wood to address climate change has not paid off.
Forests in Finland and Estonia, for example, once seen as key assets for reducing carbon from the air, are now the source of so much logging that government scientists consider them carbon emitters. In Hungary, the government waived conservation rules last month to allow increased logging in old-growth forests.
And while European nations can count wood power toward their clean-energy targets, the E.U. scientific research agency said last year that burning wood released more carbon dioxide than would have been emitted had that energy come from fossil fuels.
“People buy wood pellets thinking they’re the sustainable choice, but in reality, they’re driving the destruction of Europe’s last wild forests,” said David Gehl of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a Washington-based advocacy group that has studied wood use in Central Europe.
The industry has become so big that researchers cannot keep track of it...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Europe isn't going to have a tree standing after this winter.
If nothing else, more self contradictory results of enviro whacko ideas being put into actual practice.
Don’t worry. When the people are all gone the forest will re-seed itself and grow back.
It’s all a matter of Time.
Lots of space for wind turbines and solar farms ,LOL
Oh, for heaven’s sake. When you’re cutting down old-growth trees - I assume that’s what “ancient forests” means, rather than commercial pine plantations - instead of using natural gas, you’ve gone totally loo-loo.
A long time. A long, long time, or maybe never, for the forest soil to be restored after logging.
As a joke I was going to suggest that they do that a few days ago.
I missed my chance, it’s now a reality.
California will be doing the same thing.
and when it gets really cold
they will be eyeing the dining room furniture
You’re not going to believe this but Michael Moore’s film, Planet of the Humans, does a real good job of showing the idiocy of burning trees instead of fossil fuels. His example is we are chopping down forests in North Carolina and then shipping pellets to England to power plants. Insanity.
Didn’t these sickos go after wood burning stoves not long ago?
“burning wood released more carbon dioxide than would have been emitted had that energy come from fossil fuels.”
LOLOL...the “Law of Unintended Consequences” rears its ugly head once again.
Next up: animal-hide clothing and flint-tip arrows.
Agree totally predictable. Liberal greenie weenies have no idea how much wood you have to burn to keep a house from freezing during the winter. Coal is a much better heat source and doesn’t destroy old growth forests. You need 3 to 4 cords per 1000 sq ft. So that’s a densely packed wood pile 4 x 4 x 24-32 feet coal would take about half that volume, but coal is like krypton to green energy freaks do burn more wood instead.
Yes! You beat me to it. What started out as a way to make use of scrap wood and sawdust has turned into forest harvesting in NC.
But since I know the area well, I must say that the scrub forests of eastern NC, a mixture of pine and other soft woods, aren’t useful for much else. If you replant pines it goes back within 25-30 years.
Wow, I did not know the Germans were clear cutting their forests to build windmills. That is awful. Absolutely horrendous.
Sounds like we better see it before its too late.
Same with the magnificent vistas in the western USA. All will soon be gone, buried under a forest of millions of windmills with a billion tons of buried concrete. Each windmill has a lifespan of 20 years, MAYBE 25 to 30 tops. Then what? Ten million bare windmill towers sitting idle across a million square miles.
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