Eye View 

by David Charbonneau

Warnings ignored, too late now to burn beetle-killed forests for energy

 

January 14, 2010



It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Four years ago in this column I suggested that the burning of pine-beetle killed wood to produce electricity would be a good idea. That was before the wood began to decompose.

Now the dead wood is rotting faster than anticipated and the opportunity has passed.

Before the decomposition started, the burning of wood made sense because the release of greenhouse gases was going to happen regardless of whether the wood was left on the forest floor or burned. Either way it was “carbon neutral.” The carbon released would be no more than the carbon absorbed during the tree’s lifetime.

Who would have thought that the beetle-killed trees would now be producing more CO2 than Alberta’s reviled oil sands? Sadly, our once green forests produce almost double the greenhouse gases according to federal researchers.

Thankfully, our forests won’t have to bear the humiliation of this comparison much longer; greenhouse gases from dead wood will soon peak while those from oil sands will continue to rise. By next year they will be equal and over the next 50 years, CO2 release from dead trees will slowly decline.

If B.C. had invested in biomass generating plants earlier, burning dead trees might have been an option if trees for fuel. Now it’s only an option for small scale operations.

Only a year ago, Premier Campbell painted a rosy picture of our forests as part of B.C.’s climate action plan. Forests were supposed to be carbon sinks, not sources of greenhouse gases. “We have few natural allies in our fight against climate change that are more important than our forests,” he said as part of the province’s goal to reduce greenhouse gases by one-third by 2020.

Another problem with burning trees for electricity is that the practice invites abuse such as the proposal to burn creosote rail ties in Kamloops. If we allow the burning of clean wood, so the faulty reasoning goes, why not accept dirty wood?
 

Supporters of the rail-tie burning plant have tried to paint opponents as environmentalists and NIMBYs. They attempt to marginalize supporters as part of “special interest groups;” fuzzy logic and no business sense.
 

The not-in-my-back-yard label is also meant to dismiss concerns of opponents as hypocrites who accept the benefits of industry as long as they don’t endure any of the consequences.

But the NIMBY label doesn’t stick to concerned Kamloopsians. We already have a pulp mill, a wood-burning electricity plant and a wood pellet plant that all discharge into our valley.

Not only do we have enough burning in our valley; the proposed experimental plant is being run by operators with little knowledge of the technology. A spokesperson’s comments are revealing.

The head of Aboriginal Cogeneration Corporation, Kim Sigurdson, recently said in Kamloops that we don’t have to worry about creosote in the railway ties because it’s “brought through an enormous amount of heat and all the bad stuff is made inert. At the end of the day the ash is equivalent to potash.”

Sigurdson displays poor understanding of gasification. The bad stuff is not made inert. In theory, organic compounds like creosote would be turned into a gas to run generators.

And at the end of the day, what’s left is fly ash not potash. While potash is the relatively innocuous remains of a wood fire, fly ash is a problem because it can contain toxic metals that are not broken down by high temperatures. One of the myths of gasification is that it will get rid of all the bad stuff.

Toxic metals like chrome and arsenic are not broken down because they are elements, not compounds. It would take more than high temperatures for that to happen. As Professor Paul Connett explained out in his presentation in at TRU last October, “this is not a nuclear reactor.”

Even if the experimental plant ran according to theory, problems of fly ash, valley air inversions and release of nanoparticles remain.

Despite Sigurdson’s assurances, the proposed plant does not use proven technology on a large scale. Dr. Patel from the University of North Dakota, where the technology is being developed, says that Kamloops would run a “demonstration site.”

Burning of clean wood in an unburdened air shed might have been a good idea at one time but the burning of dirty wood is an idea whose time never was, never should be.


 

David Charbonneau is the owner of Trio Technical.
He can be reached at dcharbonneau13@shaw.ca

 

 





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