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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@m-j-r.eth
I'd much rather prefer timber being used for solar-powered cabins, but that has downsides in northern climates. even crypto had greenwashing like KlimaDAO. imho carbon accounting should be complemented by direct agroforestry accounting. if the baseload demand never goes away and forces loopholes like these, the responsibility should shift to how much water is treated and transported to accelerate % planet surface that's "rubisco'd". ironically, cutting down hardwood trees can increase biodiversity & photosynthesis in the short term, seems intuitive to repurpose structure for structure. wood-fired electricity is like burning peat; it only makes sense in medieval isolation.
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