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– Climate Change
for related pages on nsforestmatters.ca
– Biofuels from Nova Scotia Forests?
– How ‘green’ electricity from wood harms the planet — and people
By Melba Newsome, Nature News Briefing.Aug 20, 2024: ”Many nations have embraced burning wood pellets to produce electricity — under the assumption that it is carbon neutral. But research shows this approach can boost greenhouse-gas emissions and threaten the health of local communities. ”
How a Japanese Earthquake Shook BC’s Forest Future
Ben Parfitt 24 Apr 2024The Tyee Tip of the Hay to Bev W for this one. “In the land of the rising sun, the light of a setting sun glints so brightly on the shiny metal piping of Renova’s Ishinomaki Hibarino power plant that you have to shield your eyes. Located north of the city of Sendai, the new thermal electricity plant is one of several in Japan that burns biomass to generate electricity, in this case enough to supply 17,000 homes. Renova’s biomass comes in one of two forms: wood pellets made from felled trees, and palm kernel shells, the waste left over after processing palm oil…Similar scenes are playing out up and down Japan’s coast at thermal electricity plants that have sprung up with eye-popping speed following the sudden and profound energy crisis thrust upon the country on March 11, 2011…I came away from that 10-day trip, which took me to Tokyo and Sendai, more convinced that the surge in wood pellet shipments to Japan and two other countries in particular — the United Kingdom and South Korea — is pushing B.C. deeper into a timber supply crisis that will have consequences both at home and abroad. “
Comment on Steenberg/NS NRR Forest Bioenergy Paper
Page on www.versicolor.ca/nstriad, posted Jan 21, 2023. Also available on this website as a PDF . ““New paper out on life cycle #GHG dynamics for different scenarios of forest-based bioenergy in Nova Scotia” So reads an Announcement on Twitter by James Steenberg, first author of the paper, on Jan 2, 2023. The tweet provides a link to: Life-Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Forest Bioenergy Production at Combined Heat and Power Projects in Nova Scotia, Canada, by James W N Steenberg, Jérôme Laganière, Nathan W Ayer, Peter N Duinker, published in Forest Science Jan 2, 2023. Comment. The full paper is not publicly available on the publisher’s site. I learned about it from a Facebook Post on Jan 20, 2023 in which a PDF of the paper was also provided. I was asked to comment on the FB page…Steenbery et al. have introduced what seems to be a new ploy in the obscurification of GHG balances: the “different market/supply-chain assumptions around additionality and product substitution”. All additionality runs of the model for primary biomass (roundwood) have carbon parity times of 86 to 100 years. No surprise** But the corresponding “Product Substitution”. also referred to as BAU (Business as Usual) scenarios, are 4-9 years. Basically the latter means that “oh gosh we lost the Northern Pulp operation, and this is a substitution for that industry that would have been emitting GHGs anyway.”