Home Architecture Talk - How can "Burning Trees in power stations" be 'Green'"?

How can "Burning Trees in power stations" be 'Green'"?

Heard a bloke on "Weakest Link" describing his job as "Green" and "Sustainable" - he chops down forests, and the trees are burnt in power stations! If his misunderstanding wasn't so almightily awful + sad, I would have laughed... 1) We need MATURE trees - each and every one... We need a rich, FREE oxygen supply... The alarming rate of Deforestation... 2) Burning omits CO2... If this is the state of current "expert" intelligence, gawd help us! (More info. re: Deforestation: Please see FREE pdf download on my website: http://www.the-alternative.org.uk Chapter 3: Architecture / Destruction of Forests - use 'Bookmarks' to find). Kenny B: Uh? Get out of here! Soon there'll be nothing left! Rogues and scoundrels will have taken everything! Except the gas, of course! To you guys trees are only there for you to abuse - they're not living things, who deserve to live, and grow, to be beautiful things. Note: There's hardly any ancient woodland left to decimate but there are yet more foul schemes afoot... If you don't burn the trees, they absorb more CO2, yes? We need to lessen CO2, yes?

Public Comments

Because the amount of CO2 release burning a tree is EXACTLY the same amount absorbed by the tree when it was growing. Burning trees is carbon neutral. Obviously these are new forsests planted for this purpose and not some ancient woodland so it is a very sustainable way of generating energy.
Well we can all agree on one thing and that is that we are at a point that we cannot exist as a society without elctricity...Various methods of producing it ...coal fired plants/hydroelectric/nuclear etc and in your case ..wood fired power plants...On the surface it would seem to bee opposite anything that is green but given the aobve it probably is the greeenest provided that the production fazacility is utilizing reforested sorces/trees are a renewable source of energy ( unlike coal/oil or natural gas fired plants....That is where the "green label " label comes to play.....Look at it as probably the best of a bad situation...
Because sensible people have figured out how to play liberal eco-nutbags against each other, and it's so much fun to watch them go at it.
Burning and the destruction of any trees is oblivious, far from being green, just because perhaps it may be a government run power station to justyfy stupidity mistaken for being green; but who is the expert on what is green or black? Most power companies have to justyfy their uneccessary price hikes on gas and electric charges then add an additional charge on green house gas usage to justyfy ripping off their clients. They are all guilty whhen it comes to stealing and robbing their clients. Call it green house gas emission charges, charge what ever they like and who can argue with legal thieves? Who they are the biggest offenders of them all. How can the killing of trees be Green? burning them is still killing them, justyfy what you like, every crook likes to look good on telly when they suck badly and anything can be green instead of black. Remember its the lucky Cuntry full of crooks. Power companies are the best cheers
50% of your tree is waste.By the time its squared and any bark and bad wood is cut off that is what you get,some is used for paper and some is for hog fuel (burned for power) the bark is burned or used for road base in landscaping park trails.We need to use hemp wake up people just think how many farmers will be working again there are so many farms just shut down and the fields are just left to natural grasses .We have to start thinking out of the box again is to easy to just go and cut down a forrest.48% of news print still goes to the landfill why???? im working on making housing blocks from recycled paper and drywall what are you going to do.???????????????
I guess your dont realize that any tree in the US that is cut down to be used for PAPER or ENERGY is farmed. The were planted there just for that reason and they will be replaced to be cut back down again in the future. Its not like they are going out and stripping forests for newspapers and power, we would have run out of trees long ago if that were the case. Wood for lumber is not all farmed because there are people who have their own property who request the trees be removed and it is then in turn used for lumber. But a majority of lumber is sustainable because it is farmed. But I know for a fact trees for paper and energy must come from farms, which are then replenished by new young trees. And for Clair S: What you just stated shows that none of the tree goes to waste. You start off your arguement saying 50% of the tree is wasted but then add that the bark is used for fuel and for mulch on trails and landscaping or paper oh and dont forget about Plywoods which is just wood chips glued together, sounds like putting the entire tree to use to me. Even the small branches with the leaves still on gets put through a wood chipper to add to the mulch. I don't see 50% of the waste you are talking about.
There are more trees today than there was 30 years ago. DO not mess with the percent of oxygen.The correct level is 20.9 %, !9.5 is the lower limit. Any where the oxygen level is above 23% ir is very hazardous. Every thing will burn like it has gasoline on it.
The idea is to burn refuse or waste. Nature does it all the time through lightning strikes or other natural storms to flush out the ecosystem of decomposition to replace it with new stuff (for a better term)
Energy use is not sustainable. Trees are a good source of fuel for the fires that our hunter gather ancestors used fro survival. They only messed up the environment when deliberate burning of undergrowth go out of hand. We just use too much energy as we have too much technology to power and too many people around to use it. There is no easy solution to the problem we have created for ourselves, apart from cutting down on what we do consume and leading a more sustainalble life style, somehow. Trees have as much right to exist, as part of this planet, as we do. they once covered cast swathes of the earth, conserving other speices and affecting the weather. Without trees, grasses,insects and all sorts of species of living things we would have a tough time.
Ah! I think this is what the gentleman was referring to. Willow and Poplar are definitely trees and the carbon they absorb during life is countered by what they release after being burned making them carbon neutral energy.
probably because trees are a renewable source of fuel so you can grow more but you Carnot grow coal
It sounds better than coal, although it likely isn't "green". You should probably know that the word "decimate" only means "to destroy ten percent of." I doubt that's what you were going for in the additional details. Anyway, this might not be the best source of energy, that really depends on where the trees he burns come from. Obviously there are more eco friendly ways of dealing with energy problems, but I can't help but feel you took some liberties in describing what actually happened. I doubt someone would actually say "we trash up forests and burn all the wood" and call that.. well what you said he called it. Either way, it is a problem that huge chunks of forests get destroyed every year - I'm amazed myself at how much is destroyed. So to answer your question (finally) I doubt that there is a way to call that green.
Its a crazy world. Everyone calls themselves green these days because its fashionable. "Green" people can even justify themselves as green while being rabid-consumers, provided they chuck their trash in the recycle-bin instead of the rubbish, its ok. Who is going to participate in "Buy Nothing Day" tomorrow?
This is called biomass, and as long as it is managed correctly it is green. The trees absorb CO2 when they grow. When burnt they release this. The result is energy which overall adds no new CO2 to the atmosphere. The trees when growing also help control noise pollution and reduce wind speeds. Any sustainable system will have these trees replaced as they are harvested. As long as this occurs then the system is green. If the trees aren't replaced then the scheme is not green. If the trees are not burnt they will eventually die and this too will release the CO2 when they rot. The CO2 they absorbed will be returned to the environment, however the tree finishes its life.
I hate to say this but you have obviously grasped the wrong end of what ever stick it is you have picked up. Burning wood from plantation forests is sustainable as these forests are replanted after clearing. I also suspect that the wood burned by the power station is the offcuts and other small branches that the timber industry can not use. The fact is that plantation trees are cropped like any other crop and so your idea that we need mature trees is a rather spurious one in this case. In times gone by people would copse trees of certain kinds for all sorts of purposes and one of those was fuel. The only problem with a wood burning power station is probably the distance that the wood has to be transported and I would think that that is by road.
Depends how you interpret "green" - potentially sustainable but not necessarily carbon neutral. http://www.biomassenergycentre.org.uk/portal/page?_pageid=76,15068&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL