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Biomass power station produced four times emissions of UK coal plant, says report
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2024
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The way its currently operating seems highly inefficient, but the point about biopower stations is that they aren't introducing more carbon into the carbon cycle. These trees would have died eventually and returned to the carbon cycle naturally, they are just controlling the process for human power. Imagine if it was running off of a tree farm that was geographically next to the power plant, for instance.
It's a matter of time scale. When burning wood from old trees, and planting new trees instead, and it take several decades for tree to grow old enough to compensate for what released on day 1. The emitted particules affect air quality, and emitted carbon will affect climate for decades. One of these effects is an increase in forest fire, and a burned tree cannot capture carbon.
Unfortunately we cannot wait decades to reduce emissions.
Similarly, burning fossil fuel isn't introducing more carbon into the earth, it'll eventually be absorbed by planctons, trees, etc and will make it back in the ground. That cycle is longer however, housands or million of years.
Sure of the first point I guess? I'm not some huge advocate of this technology, I'm just saying it's not an apples to apples comparison where you can simply say its 4x worse.
On the second point, no. It takes 10s or 100s of millions of years for coal/oil to form. And most of the stuff we mine/drill for was formed from trees before bacteria/fungus evolved ways to break down cellulose, so dead trees just piled up. Its plausible that its never removed from the carbon cycle unless we are the ones to put it back where we got it from. It will certainly not happen on human time scales.