Burning Tree's Ain't Green, Especially If They're Imported

The Biomass Idiocy

I’ve just encountered one of the more deranged aspects of the net zero idiocy up close, in my truck. One of the creations of the net zero obsession is biomass power plants. These, the theory runs, are green because they burn plants – mostly trees. By harvesting the plants space is created to grow more trees, which will absorb the CO2 emitted by burning the original tree. It is therefore considered “carbon neutral” as the atmospheric emissions are reabsorbed by the growing replacement tree.

Well perhaps. Or perhaps not.

For a start, the tree that was felled was orders of magnitude larger that the sapling that will replace it. It therefore absorbed more CO2 at a higher rate than its replacement. Sure, if and when the sapling reaches maturity it will have absorbed the same amount of CO2 as was emitted when the tree was burned, but that could perhaps 50 years (i.e. by 2076), until which time the green biomass power plant is actually increasing the amount of CO2.

But the power plant combustion emissions are just a part of it. A firm I drove trucks for recently had one of several contracts to deliver timber, in the corm of 10 foot logs, to a biomass plant. Every day three of their trucks haul trailers loaded with 25 tons of wood some 30 miles to the plant, and then repeat. The truck averages 6 miles per gallon, including the empty return trips. Each load therefore uses 10 gallons, which causes 110 kg of CO2 emissions. My employer’s three trucks at three loads a day each emits ton of CO2 per day. We’re not the only haulier, plus the tree needed felling, sawing to length, stacking and loading onto the trailer. All by diesel engines. All with CO2 emissions and those emissions can’t be captured by the tree, unless it stays in the ground longer – which means more acres of forestry are required.

That, in part, is the thinking behind Vaughan Gething’s cretinous Labour Welsh government’s decision to insist on all farms planning 10% of their land to forestry (and another 10% to be rewilded). 20% less agricultural land means 20% less production which in turn will reduce Welsh farm income by 20% (£400 billion or so a year) and reduce agricultural employment by 20%. It might reduce Welsh emissions from agricultural diesel, although establishing forestry takes a bit of effort (i.e. CO2), as does harvesting it.

The real lunacy, however, is that the food not produced in Wales will have to be imported from elsewhere. That will involve a journey in refrigerated cargo ships and containers, possibly from as far away as New Zealand. Producing that food will generate the same amount of CO2 that producing it in Wales did. Delivering it to Wales will generate more CO2. (That doesn’t count in the bizarre world of emissions accounting as only those emissions from the UK are part of the total. Our imports of food, power, goods and services simply don’t register on.) Gething’s destruction of Welsh agriculture will make Wales appear greener, (as it the valleys weren’t green enough), by increasing the world’s CO2 emissions. Such is the deranged logic of net zero. For a cosmetic benefit Gething and his crew of fools are throwing more Welsh jobs and landscape on the scrapheap while failing to “save” the planet.

This lunacy is not just a Welsh problem, it’s UK wide. The most egregious example is Drax power station – converted from coal to biomass at vast (taxpayer) expense. Drax is now the largest buyer of wood pellets from America. That’s right, it imports wood from across the Atlantic, so if one were to implement CO2 emissions apportionment “correctly” Drax can’t be green. Under the government’s chosen CO2 accounting method - the territorial basis - emissions and mitigations are counted where they arise. Only if they happen in the UK do they count towards the UK’s total. Under this methodology the emissions impact of (say) a battery being manufactured in China and shipped to the UK is precisely zero. Yet Drax, which emits in the UK but grows trees outside the UK is considered green and received over £6 billion of subsidies to prove it. Such inconsistency smells of incompetence, at best.

All net zero is doing is exporting industry (and with it employment, tax revenue and wealth creation) while making little impact on global emissions and increasing the UK’s cost of energy, and thus everything. The UK emits just 1% of global CO2 emissions; net zero would change nothing even if CO2 were the prime cause of climate change, which it almost certainly isn’t.

The only political party in the UK challenging the net zero narrative is Reform. As it rises in the polls the net zero establishment, all of whom exist on a gravy train of public subsidy, is panicking and becoming abusive – the last resort of the desperate.

Enjoy the spectacle – you’ve paid through the nose for it!

Then, when you get the chance, vote to end the lunacy.