Burning Our Forests For Fuel Will Doom Our Planet

This map of our Global Tree Canopy shows how few trees still grow on our planet. And at present, we are still continuing to lose vast areas of our forests. The story below covers just one of the threats to this vital natural resource.

NASA image of Global Tree Canopy - Click to enlarge

The Problem With Bioenergy

by David Neads
Published by The Kingfisher, the magazine of the Land Trust Alliance of BC Canada
Volume 21, Summer-Fall 2010

Bioenergy is an urgent problem that requires a real and immediate reduction of CO2 emissions. Burning wood to replace fossil fuels will increase CO2 output for several decades. And there is no assurance that energy from wood-fueled power would replace energy from gas-fired plants; it may just all be additional to the CO2 loading.

Most people would not support building a coal fired power plant in their community these days. One would anticipate that such an installation would increase CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, violating global agreements and utterly failing to meet provincial, national and international targets for the reduction of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.

Yet, amazingly, provincial policy sanctions building wood fired power plants instead of electrical generation using natural gas. This is perplexing, because burning wood produces twice as much CO2 emissions per unit energy produced than a natural gas generating station.

Provincial regulators justify emissions created by burning wood as ‘carbon neutral’. This is  surprising, because the atmosphere can’t discriminate between molecules. CO2 is CO2, whether it comes from a tailpipe or a ‘carbon neutral’ stack.

The crux is the definition of carbon neutrality. To put it simply, when trees grow, they take CO2 out of the atmosphere to make wood fibre. When this fibre is burned, that CO2 is released back into the atamosphere. As new trees regrow they pull this CO2 back out of the air, so, in theory, the CO2 just goes around and around in a Biogenic Carbon Cycle.

Fossil carbon is labeled non neutral because it is locked deep within the earth and is millions of years old. Left in the ground, that carbon will not reach the atmosphere. If it is released into the atmosphere, it is additional to the carbon already circulating in the Biogenic Carbon Cycle. That
increases greenhouse gas emissions – the crux of our climate change problem. Since the industrial revolution, with its reliance on burning coal and natural gas brought from far underground, additional CO2 has been released, causing a large portion of our current climate change.

In theory, a switch from fossil carbon to biogenic carbon would be neutral and could help reduce climate change by reducing the input of new carbon into the planetary budget.

Unfortunately, this theory doesn’t fit reality.

Present CO2 levels are around 390 ppm and rising, with no reduction in sight. Once amounts increase beyond 450 ppm, scientists project that major disruption to the global climate system is likely. Predictive models anticipate significant sea level rise and dramatic temperature and rainfall shifts. These are likely to cause major diebacks and extinctions of many species, including humans. In order to reduce these consequences, a 33% reduction of CO2 emissions is needed by 2020 and an 80% reduction by 2050. That is just forty years from now.

The Biogenic Carbon Cycle takes more than a century to complete in interior temperate forests and much longer in coastal ecosystems. Under the best growing conditions, new forest will only be able to absorb approximately 80% of the CO2 released by the logging and burning of trees because additional CO2 is released by logging equipment, soil disturbance, transport, milling and shipping.

Wood has a very low energy density. When it is substituted for natural gas in fuel switching operations, there is an immediate doubling of CO2 release per unit energy produced. In other words, if a switch is made today from natural gas to wood, CO2 emissions will be doubled, adding more GHG emissions to the system than if the facility had continued to burn natural gas.

So far, this fuel comparison leaves out inclusion of the essential natural values that the conversion of these areas entails: habitat loss due to forest removal; loss of adaptation options for species of all kinds; ecosystem alteration; and loss of ecosystem services that nature provides to people.

All these facets of Bio Energy fuel production are cumulative, adding to the existing CO2 footprint. In summary, fuel switching from natural gas to Bio Energy using forest wood will likely double CO2 emissions; contravening all agreements and making it impossible to reach government legislated GHG reduction targets for 2020 and 2050.

Government policy needs to reflect the real emissions from fuel switching to wood in their tracking process and bring this accounting into the legal framework of GHG reduction targets for 2020 and 2050. We need to immediately and dramatically reduce CO2 emissions, and substituting wood for natural gas will instead increase these emissions.

As a society, we can no longer gamble with the reality of climate change. Faulty accounting needs to be replaced with a complete analysis, that gives a true picture of B.C’s energy production profile. CO2 emissions can be reduced immediately and dramatically only with policies that encourage non carbon sources of energy such as wind, tidal, solar, geothermal and, most importantly, energy conservation.

More detailed information and references/citations available on request.
Contact Dave Neads <precipice@xplornet.ca>

**********************************************************************

Fixing a Critical Climate Accounting Error
528 23 OCTOBER 2009 VOL 326 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org

The accounting now used for assessing compliance with carbon limits in the Kyoto Protocol and in climate legislation contains a far-reaching but fixable flaw that will severely undermine greenhouse gas reduction goals. It does not count CO2 emitted from tailpipes and smokestacks when bioenergy is being used, but it also does not count changes in emissions from land use when biomass for energy is harvested or grown. This accounting erroneously treats all bioenergy as carbon neutral regardless of the source of the biomass, which may cause large differences in net emissions. For example, the clearing of long-established forests to burn wood or to grow energy crops is counted as a 100% reduction in energy emissions despite causing large releases of carbon. Several recent studies estimate that this error, applied globally, would create strong incentives to clear land as carbon caps tighten.

One study ( 2) estimated that a global CO2 target of 450 ppm under this accounting would cause bioenergy crops to expand to displace virtually all the world’s natural forests and savannas by 2065, releasing up to 37 gigatons (Gt) of CO2 per year.

**********************************************************************

Last year the state of Massachusetts suspended licenses for new wood-burning power plants and  commissioned a study on the environmental impacts of burning wood for electricity. That study, conducted by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, has just been released and it shows that, per unit, wood releases more climate-damaging gases than coal. Coal is considered one of the chief culprits of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The sobering conclusion is that Massachusetts cannot produce very much new energy from forest resources while also protecting the health of our forests and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Sue Reid, a staff attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation.

Order the Silva Forest Foundation’s new book by Herb Hammond, Maintaining Whole Systems on Earth’s Crown: Ecosystem-based Planning for the Boreal Forest. This book provides details for ecosystem-based planning from large landscapes to small patches in any ecosystem type and guidance for developing diverse, community-based economies. To order go to www.silvafor.org/publications.