Alexander C. Kaufman pfp
Alexander C. Kaufman
@kaufman
This is a pretty good breakdown of the insanity that is the transatlantic wood pellet energy trade. U.N. carbon accounting rules count the CO2 from losing a tree in the country where it’s cut down. So when American trees are milled into pill-sized pellets and shipped to, for example, England to be burned in a power plant, the British can claim its carbon-free power — even though they’re burning twice as much to compensate for the more energy-dense coal they’re replacing. This scam has been allowed to continue, however, in part because the typical pro-climate bloc in Europe — ie Nordic countries — all have big timber industries and haven’t wanted to crack down on a market. Meanwhile, the heavily-polluting pellet mills processing all these old-growth forests being felled in the American South are overwhelmingly located in poor, rural and mostly Black towns.
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Jawa pfp
Jawa
@jawa
Have you heard of any positive development in waste to energy tech like gas plasmafication ? It seems like such a logical area to explore since feed stock is already distributed where power is needed. The only place I know it’s being done is on large aircraft carriers.
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Alexander C. Kaufman pfp
Alexander C. Kaufman
@kaufman
Waste to energy definitely has promise, and biomass was initially billed that way. The problem is the market incentivized just harvesting healthy trees
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