"He says the plant now uses seven million tonnes of pellets sourced from commercial forests in the US a year"
How is this helping? Are we seriously chopping down forests in the US to feed UK power plants just so people can feel good about not burning coal?
Honestly I think most of 'environmentally friendly' options are just scams to make people feel better about themselves, but the costs of the 'green' option is just as bad or worse than the alternatives.
I think having potentially foreign-owned interests coming into the US to buy up land for commercial logging in order to feed non-coal burning plants is not a net positive.
Why? On the face of it, the US has lots of land to spare, and if the trees are being harvested sustainably, then why does it matter where they are sold?
Sure, all else being equal I'd rather use solar than coal or wood, but if it's more economically viable in the short run to switch a coal plant to wood, thus getting to carbon-neutral, that seems like progress to me.
At some point solar will be cheap enough that the CapEx of replacing the coal/wood plant will be less than the OpEx of running the old plant, and it'll get torn down. (Indeed that crossover point has been hit in some markets, c.f. https://www.vivintsolar.com/blog/solar-energy-is-now-cheaper...)
I prefer not to make perfect the enemy of the good; I'll take some compromises if that's what it takes to get our CO2 emissions down.
Commercial logging doesn't protect the environment and it's likely even worse than digging up coal and burning it. In the end some politician somewhere is running for re-election and I'm sure this is great press. However, it's not good for the environment:
Here's another discussing why the EUs view of burning trees is off:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa512/...
"Sixth, growth in wood harvest for bio energy causes a steady increase in atmospheric CO2 because the initial carbon debt incurred each year exceeds what is repaid. With the US forest parameters used here, growth in the wood pellet industry to displace coal aggravates global warming at least through the end of this century, even if the industry stops growing by 2050."
How is this helping? Are we seriously chopping down forests in the US to feed UK power plants just so people can feel good about not burning coal?
Honestly I think most of 'environmentally friendly' options are just scams to make people feel better about themselves, but the costs of the 'green' option is just as bad or worse than the alternatives.
Bio fuels with ethanol sourced from corn comes to mind. It puts land under cultivation to produce the corn which is never taken into the discussion. https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_ethanol_bad_...