The big green con continues in Europe. While the USA is burning more and more clean natural gas, Europe is burning more wood!
“Which source of renewable energy is most important to the European Union?
Solar power, perhaps? (Europe has three-quarters of the world’s total installed capacity of solar photovoltaic energy.)
Or wind? (Germany trebled its wind-power capacity in the past decade.) The answer is neither.
By far the largest so-called renewable fuel used in Europe is wood.
In its various forms, from sticks to pellets to sawdust, wood (or to use its fashionable name, biomass)
accounts for about half of Europe’s renewable-energy consumption.
In some countries, such as Poland and Finland, wood meets more than 80% of renewable-energy demand.
Even in Germany, home of the Energiewende (energy transformation) which has poured huge subsidies
into wind and solar power, 38% of non-fossil fuel consumption comes from the stuff.”
http://www.thegwpf.org/environmental-lunacy-europe-wood-craze/
sunshine hours 
Supposedly carbon neutral, but environmentally friendly?
In Western Canada, where forestry is big, the enviros hate it for the clear-cutting, bark waste, sawmill pollution of land, air and water (don’t forget the streamflow and snowpack problems of clear-cutting) and longterm reforestation in drier, colder regions. I wonder how these issues are being handled in Europe?
And I wonder what the cost of wood for your stove/power generator is….
Cheaper than burning coal because of subsidies and the carbon tax. 2x – 3x the amount of CO2 too.
On top of this, wood requires a great deal more land to produce the same amount of energy via biomass than energy dense fossil fuels. By the EU’s own numbers biomass will be 65% of the renewable mix. (this mix accounting for 20% of total power generation). How long before land grabs are done in thirld world countries to supply the EU? How many indigenous people will be ‘relocated’ to establish these renewable forests? It’s already happening in Brazil. “The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), a £1bn public-private investment body, said it was launching a project to map all the “under-utilised” land in Britain to find out how much could be turned over to growing bioenergy crops.” dubya dubya dubya dot guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/20/moorlands-and-biomass-crops this to include moorlands and hillsides. The New Highland Clearances? “the body had made the conservative estimate that 2.4m hectares could be used in Britain to grow bioenergy crops” Grown beneath that other blight, windmills, I assume.
Rather than residues of forestry, whole trees, roots and all are converted to biomass burning… leaving no nutrient return to the soil through rotting. If pulp and paper did this there would be Hell to pay!! Further damage is done by heavy equipment used in the harvesting compressing the soil… another unintended consequence.
“Developments in the UK illustrate the scale of the new demand: Power stations which will burn around 27 million tonnes of biomass are planned, and up to 700,000 domestic biomass/wood burners are expected by 2020, this in a country which already relies on imports for around 80% of all wood and wood products it uses.” dubya dubya dubya dot globalforestcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/briefing-paper-bioenergy_final_1.pdf
Domestic biomass/wood burners?????? Meaning woodstoves!!!!!!! How much pollution does this produce???? You’ld be surprised… here in Ontario, coal fired power generating stations produce 1,771 tonnes of CO (note monoxide) woodstoves 154,349 tonnes. Particulate matter coal Total=2000 tonnes 10micron=1400 tonnes 2.5micron=700 tonnes. Particulate matter woodstoves Total=24,000 tonnes 10micron=23,000 tonnes 2.5micron=23,000 tonnes. dubya dubya dubya dot ec.gc.ca/pdb/websol/emissions/ap/ap_result_e.cfm?year=2009&substance=all&location=ON++++++++§or=&submit=Search
Don’t even get me started on REDD 😉
You think THEY are nuts ? In Australia and the USA the heritage of GW Bush’s eccentric ‘brush cutting’ exercises at his ranch in Crawford may have borne more – sneaky of course – fruit. It seems without much of a noise fines are levied against brush cutting and firebreaks protecting homes and cottages because they ‘offend carbon sequestration’ – leading to devastation in fire prone areas because fire then has homes for fuel….and increased damage from ‘drought caused by climate change.’ Then again, checking out the website for Carbon Farmers of Australia leads us down the daisy strewn path where farmers are paid not to grow crops….not to shape production to market demand but to ‘reduce carbon inputs’….which will mostly be fuel and fertilizer not used.