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Burning wood for power generation can be worse for the climate than burning gas, even when the resulting carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored, new research has shown.

The findings cast doubt on plans by several governments, including the UK, to offer subsidies or other financial support for carbon capture attached to wood-burning power.

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[-] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 days ago

Not on nearly the same scale. If properly composted, about 40% of the carbon will be turned into gases by the creatures breaking it down (in the form of carbon dioxide) but most of it would go directly back into the soil. If disposed of improperly, like in a landfill, then yes, that number shoots way up (50-90%) as you start getting methane gas production in an anaerobic environment.

In any case, just to be clear, I was just giving some sample numbers on how wood is used to create electricity.

I'm not really giving a commentary on whether it is a good idea to do this or not. I'm not an expert tin the field and it is a heavily debated process. This study suggests it's not good, but my gut feeling is that it's still better than burning fossil fuels.

There is another big issue where sometimes the wood was being sourced from non-waste sources - like Canadian old growth forest being used to fuel power plants in England. That changes the equation entirely and I'm staunchly against it. Like, if they're using sawdust from sawmills, yeah, we can talk. But reports were that whole logs were being used, and just fuck that. No fucking way!

this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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