Regarding Todd Whitcombe's article in Monday's (Jan 18) Citizen "Woodn"t it be foolish to burn ourselves out"
Todd Whitcombe raises some intelligent questions in his Jan. 18 article regarding the use of "bioenergy" and "biofuels" to mitigate CO2 emissions. Todd begins by rightly pointing out that fossil fuels are biofuels. However, they are non-renewable biofuels and their use only adds carbon to the atmosphere. Todd continues his article by demonstrating that the use of logging residue (wood waste) for fuel will always produce more CO2 than can be recaptured by regrowing the trees that produced the wood waste in the first place. If these were the only factors in the equation, Todd would be right. However, there are other elements to the carbon balance that Todd has not considered.
To mitigate fire hazard most of the wood waste in the forest is burned. This has been the quickest and most economical way to dispose of this material. When this is done, carbon is released into the atmosphere just as if it were converted into pellets or ethanol and burned in a heating stove or in a vehicle. Unfortunately, no heat or mechanical energy is captured by this process. However, if this same material is converted into pellets or ethanol and used to heat buildings or power vehicles, it displaces the fossil fuels that would otherwise be used to do this work. Because of this displacement of non-renewable fossil fuels by a source of carbon that would have been burned anyway, the trees that are regrown to replace the wood waste now have a net positive effect on the carbon balance in the atmosphere. Furthermore, the carbon that was stored in the stem of the harvested trees continues to be stored in the buildings or other products that are made from this wood while new trees are re-grown removing carbon from the atmosphere.
It is then the displacement of fossil fuels by renewable biofuels, the use of a product that would have been burned anyway to do the displacement, coupled with the growth of trees to replace the harvested trees that produced the wood waste that results in a net reduction to our carbon footprint.
Clearly the ideal situation would be to use totally non-carbon based sources of energy to power all vehicles and heat all buildings. However, we are not there yet. Today, renewable biofuels are part of the means by which BC can reduce the carbon it releases into the atmosphere.
George Halliday
Prince George
