European Energy Silliness: Wood is Top Renewable Fuel

Despite the huge investments in wind and solar renewable energy in Europe, the top form of renewable energy is wood biomass.  About half of Europe's much hyped effort to advance renewable forms of energy has wound up in wood fuel according to the 6 - 12 April issue of the Economist.  Even in Germany, 38% of non-fossil fuel consumption is wood.  In Poland and Finland, 80% of the renewable energy is from wood.

Wood, unlike wind and solar, is at least reliable.  The EU effort to get 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 is impossible based on wind and solar.  Wood makes this possible.

Coal-fired power plants have been under pressure due to the production of carbon dioxide, which according to fable will cause catastrophic man-made global warming.  So, the power companies with coal-fired power plants like wood because they can easily modify a coal-fired power plant to mix in 10% wood pellets.  In Great Britain, power plants are given a huge subsidy to use wood and this is causing a number of coal-fired power plants to convert to wood use.

So much wood is being used for fuel that Europe is importing considerable wood.  In 2012, Europe used 13 million tonnes or 13 billion kilograms.  A tonne is a metric ton or 2204.6 pounds.  Europe is expected to use 25 to 30 million tonnes of wood pellets in 2020.  In 2010, wood pellet imports increased by 50%.  Global trade in wood pellets is expected to shoot up from about 10 to 12 million tonnes now to about 60 million tonnes by 2020.  Much of this wood comes from western Canada and the southern U.S.

Consequently, prices for wood are rising rapidly.  Wood pellet prices rose from $116 a tonne in August 2010 to $129 a tonne in December 2012.  Prices of hardwood from western Canada rose by 60% since the end of 2011.  These wood price increases have contributed to the closing of about 20 large saw mills making particle board in Europe over the last five years.  The higher prices are creating difficult times for pulp and paper companies, as well as furniture makers.

Burning wood pellets in coal-fired power plants makes no sense at all.  It was early on claimed that burning wood was carbon neutral, since as the trees grew, they removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  There are many problems with this.  If you use hardwood pellets from western Canada, the output of CO2 from coal-fired plants using 10% wood pellets occurs now and it may take 100 years of new trees growing in western Canada to remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as is being emitted now.  In addition, making the wood pellets uses considerable energy and transporting them from North America to Europe uses still more.  It has been calculated that with the British subsidy of 45 Pounds per MWH of electricity, switching from gas to wood saves one tonne of CO2 emission at a cost of 225 pounds.  That is very expensive for an idea based on a failed hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming and a bad accounting of the total carbon dioxide emissions due to using wood pellet as fuel.

There are other considerations.  Land not used to grow trees can be used for other purposes that have value.  Taxpayers have to pay the subsidy money.  Consumers pay higher electricity costs, as well as higher particle board, paper, cardboard, board, and furniture costs.  They are forced to do this on the basis of a false hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming and concern for fossil fuel supplies in the face of the huge supplies of coal and natural gas now made available by hydraulic fracturing technology.

European socialism can sure cause Europeans to pursue and enforce some very silly ideas.

Obama NASA Adjusts Temperatures Again to Increase Rate of Rise

The claim that global temperatures are rising at unprecedented and disastrous rates due to fossil fuel use lies at the root of numerous Obama policies harmful to our economy.  Among them are:

• Forcing coal-fired power plants to implement much more rigorous efforts to remove trace amounts of mercury and to sequester CO2 emissions.  Though these regulations are not to take effect until after the election, they are forcing the shutdown of power plants and coal mining operations now.
• The refusal to approve the building of the Keystone XL pipeline.
• The slowdown and minimization of permits to develop oil and gas on federal lands, which are extremely large areas of the Western US.
• The prohibition of offshore leases off the Pacific, Atlantic, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico.
• New federal regulations on fracking which were issued in April.
• New regulations on emissions from refineries, causing them new expenses.
• The new CAFE requirement that cars and light-duty trucks must average 54.5 mpg by 2025.
• Heavy subsidies for electric cars that no one wants even given the subsidy, thereby forcing DOD and other government agencies to buy these undesirable cars.
• Heavy subsidies and mandates requiring the use of electricity from wind, solar, biomass and other green energy which are greatly increasing electricity costs and decreasing the electric grid reliability.

These policies are all made to seem more justified if the rate of the temperature increase in the more recent years can be enhanced and prior temperatures can be suppressed.  In light of this, Randell Hoven very recently discovered that NASA changed their database of global temperatures, once again, going back to 1880.   Some time between early July and September 2012, NASA changed the entire temperature record going back to 1880, with no announcement and no statement with the database.  The biggest changes were to the data prior to 1963 and those changes were generally decreases in the temperature.  The post-1963 temperatures were mostly increased.  This caused the 131-year trend to increase from 0.60 to 0.64 C per century.  While this is a small change, it replicates many earlier temperature adjustments, which generally depressed the earlier temperatures and raised the more recent temperatures.  There appears to be a systematic bias in the temperature adjustments.

Note that the direction of these changes seems very improbable. One would think one of the biggest effects that would require temperature adjustments would be the urban heat island effect.  The population around the world has generally increased greatly since 1880, so there should be downward corrections to compensate for that effect on weather stations in populated areas as the populations grow.  The urban heat island effect adjustments should be all the greater on recent temperature data since many rural temperature stations have been removed from the sensing system and urban stations are now a much increased fraction of the stations submitting data.  Among my earlier posts dealing with the problems of urban heat island effects and adjustments to skew the record toward greater relative temperature increases in recent times are those here, here, here, here, and here.

Hoven notes that despite the temperature changes, the first 8 months of 2012 make it the tenth hottest year in the 131 year record, every month of 1998 was hotter than the corresponding month of 2012, except for tied records in May, and the global trend since 2002 is one of cooling.  And Antarctica has the highest sea ice record ever observed.

The pressure on the Obama NASA to make temperature adjustments to help justify his many economy killing actions might well be very severe in these final weeks before the November election.  At this point, after years of opaqueness on the part of the Obama administration, it is no surprise to have another surprise adjustment of the temperature record to hype the alarmist claims of catastrophic man-made global warming.  After all, one really does need a justification for putting hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of people out of work or preventing them from getting the jobs that would be created if we took good advantage of America's abundant fossil fuel energy resources.  For more on how abundant our fossil fuel resources are, see here, here, and here.

Food Riots and Food Fuels

Believe it or not, there is a substantial number of people who recognize that turning foods such as corn and soybeans into fuel for cars does not make sense. Steven Milloy, who publishes JunkScience.com and DemandDebate.com and is an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has written a commentary on food riots and other consequences of the Green lobbyists. The article is entitled A New 'Green' Body Count Begins.

The human population is growing and with it the demand for food and fuel. People in many areas of the world are finally improving their diets and traveling and trading more. The agricultural effort world-wide has been remarkable in doing such a great job in meeting the increased demand for food. The foolish campaign against Frankenfoods, especially strong in childish Europe, is doing what it can to restrict the increase in food production. In general, the Greens are not friendly to farmers. They do not like them using woodlands, prairie lands, or marsh lands. They do not like them using fertilizers and insecticides. They do not like them using water or fuel. They sometimes do want them to produce fuel from foods such as corn, soybeans, sugar cane, and biomass. The use of biomass such as general leaves and stalks is not yet economical and may never be very economic, due to the need to haul large masses of material to biomass fuel plants, as Steven Milloy points out. So, the conversion of valuable food such as corn and soybeans into fuel is now what is happening. This reduces the food supply and drives up prices to the point that many of the poor in the underdeveloped world cannot afford enough food.

Steven Milloy points out food riots in Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Ethiopia. He does not mention the anger in Mexico due to rising tortilla prices. He does note that troops have been deployed to protect the farm fields and food warehouses in Pakistan and Thailand. Indian and Turkish government officials are quoted as saying it is foolish to turn food into biofuels.

Milloy goes on to note that the Greens are doing everything they can to prevent us from having adequate power. They propose biomass fuel disasters. They oppose every economical means of generating power, however. The Sierra Club wants to shut down our coal power plants. The Natural Resources Defense Council opposes nuclear power plants. Earth First! opposes almost every source of power, including natural gas, whose cost is rising rapidly now due to the failure to build more nuclear power plants, restrictions on new coal power plants, and restrictions on developing new oil fields in the stable western countries. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has declared that no wind mills will be allowed in Maryland, since they are an eyesore! It is clear that the Greens simply do not want to allow people to have power.

So, how do we plan for a future without power. Well, in Maryland officials are planning rolling blackouts beginning in 2011. As I have noted, we already have nightly brownouts. Personally, I would much rather live with coal-fired power plants and with nuclear power plants! I want my power and, indeed, it is essential for my laboratory business that I have high quality and dependable power. The damn Greens can go and live in Antarctica or take over Paraguay and use as little power as they wish to use!