alt Hacker NewsTrees are part of the active carbon cycle. They grow while taking in CO2, then die and rot while releasing it again. Burning them does the same thing as the second one, which was going to happen on its own.
Coal isn't part of the active carbon cycle. It would stay locked in the ground indefinitely if you didn't dig it up.
Moreover, that plant appears to be getting biomass as compressed pellets from sawmill scrap wood and sawdust, i.e. it's the refuse from trees that were already being logged to make lumber. If they didn't burn it then it would go into a landfill to rot and release the carbon anyway.
That’s not the plant I’m referring to plans to do. They’re planning to bring in 350-500 logging trucks per day.
Sure they will get sawmill scraps if they can, but if built this will be by far the largest biomass reactor in the country. When I did the math there’s not enough available scrap in the entire country to power this thing.
They’ve explicitly stated that they need 5.5 million tons of timber from the surround 250 miles of forest annually.
>Burning them does the same thing as the second one, which was going to happen on its own.
Over 50-100 years for short lived species. And much longer for longer lived species.
So yes better than coal but over the lifetime of anyone alive today it’s essentially the same thing, so it’s only really better than coal if you are looking 100 years into the future and if you stop doing cutting down existing trees at some point.