Biomass power stations " good idea or not"

[RogerS]

Biomass is in its infancy.

Certainly there's some crazy stuff going on at present, but id like to think it will be short(ish) term, and, after a while, things will settle down.

If you want a comparison, the nuclear industry didnt even care about generating electricity for decades and decades - so can you really expect biomass to be 100% sorted overnight?

We're specifically talking about burning wood here. As far as I can see there's not going to be any significant 'development' or improvement likely.

 

[RogerS]

Interesting report in the New Scientist from 2016..

The grand plan to reforest a swathe of the English Midlands is slowing down. The UK’s visionary National Forest scheme aims to turn a third of a 500-square-kilometre area south of the city of Derby to forest. But the last few years have seen successive drops in the amount of new planting and, at current rates, the goal may not be reached for another half a century.

.....
But the rate of planting has dropped from over 500 hectares a year at its peak in the early 2000s to a new low of 110 hectares in 2015-16, New Scientist has discovered. “We’re down to a hundred hectares a year at a push,” says John Everitt, chief executive of the National Forest Company (NFC), based in Swadlincote, which drives the creation of the forest.

 

[julianf]

This concept is also very much in line with my principle of putting the means of production in the hands of the people and outside the control of big business.

I visited the hinkley b site, in the run up to hinkley c final approval.

This was in the whole "will she, won't she" phase, where there was still a pretence of doubt.

All I can say is that there was a *lot* of money being spent on the C site considering we were being told that the decision had not yet been made...

Nuclear is already more expensive than offshore wind. Hinkley C will be the most expensive terrestrial object ever made. The cost risk is partially underwritten by the tax payer, in excess of the agreed purchase price of the energy.

I understand the capacity arguement, but the financial and, arguably, environmental cost of nuclear has always been obscured. The tax pound to get to this level of development will never be clear. Again the windscale stacks were never intended to generate electricity - it was just a spin off. The cold war was the driving force.

And, still, after all this military investment, since the 1950s, our latest plant will still be more expensive than, the relative new commer, offshore wind.

I do wonder where we would be if the same level of investment, over the past 70 years, had been poured into renewables?

Anyway, I digress -

My point was to be about centralisation of production.

A nuclear plant is massively centralised. Solar panels on everyone's rooves massively decentralised. And, of course, the profits from production follow.

We have recently seen cuts in the FITS rates for domestic generation, whilst increase in the funding for massively centralised generation.

You do have to wonder if it's physics of corporate interest pushing choices like this.

 

[julianf]

We're specifically talking about burning wood here. As far as I can see there's not going to be any significant 'development' or improvement likely.

You are talking about a power generation pathways that is in its early stages.

Was it not clear that I was mentioning similar methods, that are moving along the cycle, to demonstrate development that may have not been obvious to the layperson from the offset?

 

[Woody2Shoes]

I don't think that biomass will ever be anything other than a sideshow - but who knows what technical innovations may be just around the corner. Interesting article here: https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/ey ... ontroversy

The difficulty with biomass as fuel is that it diverts land use away from other things e.g. food production. In burning biofuels (even secondary ones like ethanol from maize) you're effectively burning food.

I notice that Scottish cattle farmers are complaining of a lack of food for their cattle - partly driven by increased use of material ,which would otherwise have fed cattle, to feed bio-digesters producing on-farm gas and/or electricity - or commercial power stations. for example - https://www.thescottishfarmer.co.uk/bus ... shortages/

I believe that the fuel for Drax comes from the southwestern US by ship - heaven knows what the environmental effect there is - I suspect in the Trump era no-one cares anyway.

I suppose if you're generating energy from what would otherwise be waste - cattle manure, sawdust, etc then fine - but again, the whole objective should be to minimise waste - not effectively treat waste as a (valuable) co-product!

My vote would be to get serious about tidal energy and go all-out for offshore wind (we have word-class opportunities in both these areas), besides reducing energy demand/waste.

Cheers, W2S

 

[sawdust1]

The haulier i was speaking to was collecting from me in East Devon and the loads where destined for
Kent, thats really local ! The trees are 50 years old so if i replanted with softwood it would be the same time scale before the planted trees can be harvested. But as their are no replanting grants for softwood any replanting i do will be with Hardwoods.
I'm in favour of renewables but when you are burning wood quicker than it grows ( their are 10 more
biomass plants planned to be built ) eventually you are going to run out and as it becomes scarcer for the sawmills to source decent saw logs then its going to effect us timber users with higher prices.
I was reading somewhere that so much kiln dried firewood was been shipped out of one eastern Europe country ( i can't remember which one ) they have nearly run out of Ash trees.

 

[Jacob]

I don't think that biomass will ever be anything other than a sideshow - but who knows what technical innovations may be just around the corner. Interesting article here: https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/ey ... ontroversy .............
My vote would be to get serious about tidal energy and go all-out for offshore wind (we have word-class opportunities in both these areas), besides reducing energy demand/waste.

Cheers, W2S

Agree. Biomass a bit on the side (I've got a lovely woodburner!)- the figures don't add up for large scale generation.
Tide looks good https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... d-45246445
Brilliantly simple design - basically a moored boat with two enormous propellors turned by the currents. Very accessible for maintenance and very easy to install - just drop anchor and plug it in (more or less).

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Iirc there was a huge scheme mooted for the Bristol Channel - it was kicked into touch because it would have affected wildlife.
Nothing has come of the one off Hayle despite £tens of millions being pumped into it.

 

[Yojevol]

Biomass seems to me to be an odd method harvesting solar energy when there are more direct methods available - solar panels, wind generators, tidal and hydro. The only advantage I can see is that such power stations would be controllable to match demand. The big prize in the energy business is large scale storage to enable renewable energy to collected independently from grid demand.
Brian

 

[RogerS]

Re tree plating grants ....the good news is that there are or were grants for doing this and many a small farmer grabbed the opportunity. The bad news is that no further followup was/is carried out, many of the farmers never bother to look after the trees once planted and as a result many of them simply wither and die.

 

[flying haggis]

incinerators burning normal household rubbish are a better idea (unless you live in Norfolk where the county council wouldnt put one.) it was too polluting they said despite wanting too build it next to an existing gas power station and a massive paper making plant (which probably would have bought most of the electricity and all the waste heat!!

 

[RogerS]

Intriguingly a local paper mill - Iggesunds Workington - installed a biomass boiler in 2013 and now claim that the site is carbon neutral.

Excellent news, I thought, as they must be making use of any waste from their paper and board production facilities and since the wood has had to be transported there in the first place, it sounded like a win-win.

But then I dug a bit deeper and discovered that they need 500,000 tonnes of biomass fuel per annum and that they are encouraging local farmers and landowners to grow biomass fuel (willow is suggested). This begs the question, what is the carbon footprint of transporting 500,000 tonnes of willow and did they include that in their claim to be carbon neutral.?

So I've asked them.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

I think the best biofuel schemes are the ones that use a waste product. Sugar production waste powers much of Mauritius. Bio-ethanol from sugar beet can make sense; after most of the sugar has been washed out for food use, the remaining pulp can be fermented and the alcohol distilled off for less energy input than evaporating off the water to get the last dregs of sugar. One of the bigger salad growers was considering setting up anaerobic digesters to dispose of pack house waste (don't know if it happened).

Then there's dung. Surely an underused resource, and its availability scales with population growth !

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Dung. There was in interesting article in a Mensa magazine about twenty years on unexpected consequences - this was from India -

In an area with particularly heavy pollution from cooking fires, someone decided a better way would be to set up methane digesters and cook on the gas. They duly set a scheme where smallholders and farmers brought in their cowpats and took away gas to cook on. Brilliant - but then they decided to put a small charge on the gas to pay the employees. The farmers didn't like paying for fuel which traditionally had been free, so started to cook on cowpat fires again. This caused a shortage of cowpats going to the digesters and consequently gas, so they started a small payment for cowpats believing it would solve the problem. They then ended up with a surplus of cowpats because they were paying for them and a surplus of gas because the farmers started to cut down the trees for fuel rather than pay for the gas.

 

[Tasky]

Then there's dung. Surely an underused resource, and its availability scales with population growth !

Poo. Human poo.
Turds, logs, floaters, whatever...

My evil shareholding corporate company utterly sucks in so many infuriating ways... But one thing they are frequently and rightfully willy-waving about is that the sewage we collect in is actually being used to generate electricity.
Don't ask me about the science or carbon footprint behind it, but we have at least one plant dedicated to poo-powering local homes, and several of our works sites run 50% on just poo power. These all use existing site land, no extra space needed.

We've been doing this for more than two decades already.

 

[Bodgers]

Drax gets served with biomass from Liverpool docks - it comes from US I think, purpose built train about 25 wagons - there is at least two of them running.

Brian

Yeah I saw some documentary that mentioned this. I think it is mostly Hickory in pellet form. Apparently sustainable.

Sent from my Redmi Note 5 using Tapatalk

 

[RogerS]

Intriguingly a local paper mill - Iggesunds Workington - installed a biomass boiler in 2013 and now claim that the site is carbon neutral.

Excellent news, I thought, as they must be making use of any waste from their paper and board production facilities and since the wood has had to be transported there in the first place, it sounded like a win-win.

But then I dug a bit deeper and discovered that they need 500,000 tonnes of biomass fuel per annum and that they are encouraging local farmers and landowners to grow biomass fuel (willow is suggested). This begs the question, what is the carbon footprint of transporting 500,000 tonnes of willow and did they include that in their claim to be carbon neutral.?

So I've asked them.

And they responded...bottom line, the answer is that transport costs are included in the equation.

Secondly, regarding our power plant and fuel specifically, we are required by Ofgem to satisfy the requirements of "Sustainability Criteria". There are 2 elements to this; Land Criteria and Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The former means that all fuels need to be Legal and Sustainable. The latter means that all fuels need to be below a threshold of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. To satisfy this, we are required to calculate the emissions for each received consignment through the full supply chain, from forest to boiler. This calculation is dominated by road transport but also includes any emissions from other processes (chipping, screening etc) and other modes of transport (eg sea). In order for us to be classified by Ofgem as a renewable power plant, these criteria and met with monthly data submittted. According to legislation, this data is independently audited and reported annually.

So fair play to Iggesunds. Now I've got this unused large field, very wet...just right for willow !

 

[tomatwark]

I heard on radio 4, we now have twice as much forest compared to the beginning of the 20th century. About 10% coverage with this growing to 12% within 30 years. The biggest problem is no one is planting hardwood forests as it takes 80-100 years to profit from them.

Up here in the Scottish Borders you see quite a few sites where the conifers have cut, hardwood is being planted to replace it, but as you say it takes 80-100 years to profit, although it will depend how the woodland is managed with coppicing etc, which may speed up the time profit is made.

 

[Suffolkboy]

And the end product.

Yes it might take 80-100years to get timber for woodwork but in reality certainly at the moment the market for firewood is particularly buoyant as woodburners are in fashion. One forester I know earns far more from small firewood parcels than productive conifers, although the contracts take more effort to manage.

in some crops you could start to see a meaningful return in 20 - 25years by selling coppicing with standards as you say and selling your thinnings for firewood etc.