r/ecology • u/Rapscallionpancake12 • 2d ago
22% of harvested round-wood (small logs) burned for energy in America?
"Approximately 40 percent of harvested round-wood is utilized in the production of solid wood products and 38 percent in the production of wood pulp for paper and paper products." I am curious where the other 22% goes, because I suspect its mostly burned. "In 2023, wood energy accounted for about 4.0% of residential sector end-use energy consumption and 2.4% of total residential energy consumption." Burning wood for energy releases more carbon than burning coal. https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/pubs/gtr/gtr_srs258.pdf
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u/Cottager_Northeast 2d ago
Red Herring. Burning coal releases fossil carbon. Burning wood releases carbon already in the biosphere.
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u/Rapscallionpancake12 2d ago edited 2d ago
How the carbon is released into the biosphere matters. A decaying log releasing carbon and nutrients into the soil and nourishing the plants around it is not the same as burning said log and releasing the carbon into the atmosphere. Only 2-4% of carbon typically burns in a forest fire. 11% is the high end. The Partnership for Policy Integrity, a U.S.-based group that advocates for data-driven environmental policies, finds that power plants that burn biomass emit 150 percent more carbon dioxide than those burning coal. I'm not advocating burning coal for energy, I'm advocating against burning wood for energy.
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u/starfishpounding 2d ago
Chip mills for pelletized fuel, chip board, and other engineered wood products made from chips.
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u/kmoonster 2d ago edited 2d ago
Burning wood does release carbon, but it is not fossil carbon.
Carbon in wood is part of the active carbon cycle, all else being equal. This carbon is what would normally ebb and flow over the course of (roughly) a human lifetime, or in a really long-lived tree, the span of a civilization. It is not the carbon that is at issue with climate change.
THAT DOES NOT MEAN WE CAN JUST BURN WOOD WILLY-NILLY as there are pollution consequences, de-forestation consequences, etc.; the only thing wood does not do (which coal does do) is release fossil carbon that was removed from the overall cycle a billion-ish years ago. Well, not a billion, but so long ago that the entire biosphere on earth evolved to function in climate regimes which operate without that carbon being injected even over wildly long time frames like ice ages or the life span of species (and not just individuals).
[coal is over 300 million years old on one end, and had stopped forming entirely by the time the dinosaurs vanished; at least as far as we can tell unless you count peat bogs. Regardless, life in the mammalian era has only ever known the carbon cycle we lived in up until the Industrial Revolution; it is the burning of coal and gas that threatens to return the Earth to a climate regime unknown since Dragonflies were the size of modern eagles.
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u/Capn_2inch 2d ago
Depends how much fossil fuel is burned to harvest the trees.
If the wood is cut and burned on site or very near, the wood has minimal processing, and doesn’t require any kiln drying, I’d bet the math would show that burning coal is worse. Also it would depend if the forest is developed or replaced.
If the wood is cut with heavy equipment, hauled with heavy equipment long distances, processed into pellets, kiln dried with fossil fuels, then hauled again long distances via trucking or shipping across an ocean, etc. etc. etc. I’m guessing local coal could be the better option.
What we all are missing here are the details and circumstances of either product harvested. In the end, we need to continue to change our approach and improve renewable energy technology to lessen our impact on the carbon cycle.