Does wood burning really reduce CO-2?

[southsoundtree]

id tell your green friends that youre reducing global warming whether the advertisement is true or not. i cant believe that any oil or gas based heat system can be better than burning wood. for one thing it's shipped across the world before its even burned. for another the carbon released has been out of the global system for millions of years. carbon from wood has been taken up in the last hundred years. and when you burn it another tree can take it up to be burned in fifty years of so. it really gets me when people complain about burning wood and they heat a 3000 sq. ft. house with oil and drive an hour to work. i think smoke coming out of a chimney is simply more visual and they think it has to be bad. too bad they dont think a little deeper than that...

I think that this line of reasoning makes a lot of sense.

If people would get ahead of the game, putting up lots of dry wood well in advance, it would greatly reduce the problem.

Education about burning wet wood, could help this. In the Puget Sound area we have occasional burn bans due to air temperature inversions causing build-up of smoke and particulate matter.

People think that they should build up there temperature in their stove/ insert/ fireplace so that they can burn wet wood.

As a counterpoint, think about being able to have a gas kitchen stove that burns so cleanly that it can be vented into the living area.



I think that local air quality is factored into the equation regarding problems with wood heat, so the overall cost/ benefit of each type of heating is not exactly what is being looked at with some regulations.

People's individual assessments of better/ worse is a different matter. Seems that the embodied energy and pollution (energy/ pollution that is used to get the product to market) is not looked at fully.

 

[Marc]

As a chemist, I fail to see how converting the carbon in wood to CO2 would be any different in your stove or lying on the ground and rotting. Well, a little CO in your stove.

From there it gets very complicated. Are you replanting trees? How else might you heat your house? Etc.

Well the combustion in a woodstove I suspect produces more particulate matter overall (probably hundreds of different compounds), and especially starting from cold, tying up some of the carbon that would otherwise be CO2, and like you said, there's CO as well... so that maybe why they can claim less CO2 production than is produced by rotting. It certainly is not a cut and dry issue as you allude to though.

About all we can do is burn hot, and burn dry, I think that's the best formula for wood heat. I'd rather a little more CO2 produced than having carcinogeous particulates hanging around.

 

[slinger]

Biggest advantage is that we are operating on 'current' carbon. Wood we burn today keeps x amount of 'ancient' carbon in the form of coal or gas in the ground.

 

[smokechase II]

Sustainable

"......................Somewhat unrelated but the "green" city folk mention how they eat only organic meat you mention you raise your own (and pay less and its as close to oraganic as you can get) and get a look like your a weird/cruel person and they say how can you do that! Mention you burn wood too and they think you just stepped out of the ashes of H@ll!! Its all about perception and they percieve meat as a product that comes in a package looking pretty and acceptable, burning wood is tons of smoke going into the air like a thousand packs of cigarettes going off at once!..............."

===============

Just tell those green city types that you use 'sustainable firewood'.

"The key is to not manage it like a crop."

"We've got to break this cycle of what is important for humans."

"I don't understand how this could be done any other way."

"Mother Earth news has been doing articles on this for years."

"Can I get into your pants?"

=================

All the standard lines you'd hear at a whole grain composting workshop.

 

[Wyrdman]

Burning firewood is carbon neutral. It releases CO2 that came from the atmosphere and that was going to return to the atmosphere when the wood rots in the woods. If you drive a truck and heat with firewood your carbon footprint is likely LOWER than someone who drives a Prius and burns 800 gallons of heating oil a year.

 

[Trapper_Pete]

750 gallons of #2 heating oil pre wood stove about 200 gallons after getting the wood stove and we may well make it under 200 gallons this year.

 

[LondonNeil]

Oh man. It's good to talk these things but it will not get an answer here as there's no way answer. It's very very complex. A few Things to consider:

Wood burning emits far more carbon per BTU than gas, more than oil and nearly as much as coal. If (IF.... And recent scientific announcement say it is) of urgency to reduce atmospheric carbon is high, we should burn gas to reduce emissions, not wood.

Long term gas isn't sustainable, but equally only so much wood burning is.... How much wood comes from managed sources and is replaced?

We must also factor the carbon emitted in harvesting and transporting.... Local fuels good..... Shipping wood across the world to burn (UK imports wood from US to burn in the Drax power station)..... Less good.

Local pollution always comes up when you talk wood.... Wood is dirty compared to gas. It should be considered but how? Apples and pairs pollution Vs global warming

Rotting trees don't release all carbon from a tree... Can't find source (can't be bothered to look now) but I've read as much as 50% of the carbon remains locked in the soil. The arguement then goes further....eforestation leads to soil erosion, eroded soil ends up in the sea and releases its carbon...so cutting and burning wood can lead to bigger carbon releases than you think.

What's my point? Just that is very complex. Try and do your best, don't be smug, instead keep asking if I could do better..... And don't believe any figures without question.

 

[Trapper_Pete]

to process a cord of wood I put my 93 octane consumption at 2 gallons and I think that is being generous but it depends a lot on what the wood is so it may vary but still under 2 gallons.

I cut 8 miles from the stove I move about 1/2 cord at a time in the truck as about my max load I get about 15mpg maybe only 13 when hauling that much so add 2.5 gallon of 87 octane 10% ethanol to run the tuck per cord.

the easier answer , if they get to consider ethanol a bio fuel and green , unless you do stupid things in moving wood a lot of miles. Ethanol makes wood look like a super fuel.

it takes 140 gallons diesel to make 328 gallons of Ethanol and that doesn't necessarily include the transport of corn by train to the ethanol plant or the transport of the ethanol to the fuel depot.

there is a net loss of BTU in the manufacturing of ethanol so we waste more energy than we get but hey it helps to keep the price of corn up http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2001/08/ethanol-corn-faulted-energy-waster-scientist-says


when you add in I only burn dead , dying or damaged trees for 99% of my wood .

burn it in a high efficiency stove after the first few minutes of start up no visible smoke.

I should get a thank you and a hand shake from the Eco greeny folks.

 

[rarefish383]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "who says global warming is a bad thing?" Once NY and DC are gone, my property in WV will be prime beach front.

 

[Erik B]

750 gallons of #2 heating oil pre wood stove about 200 gallons after getting the wood stove and we may well make it under 200 gallons this year.

I was burning around 600 gallons of fuel oil before wood. Since I started burning wood my oil use has been below 150 gallons per year. One year it was below 100 gallons.

 

[Deleted member 149229]

I was burning around 600 gallons of fuel oil before wood. Since I started burning wood my oil use has been below 150 gallons per year. One year it was below 100 gallons.

Since burning wood, new windows and insulating the attic, my oil furnace hasn’t run in 4 years.

 

[SamT1]

i drive a 03 dodge ram 2500 pushin over 400hp daily. my other 2 cars are a 69 charger R/T Se and a 76 camaro. take that tree huggers!

The vehicles are where we can know for sure that emissions control is total BS. With all the new technology in engines I should be able to buy a 500hp diesel truck that weighs 8k and gets 25 mpg by now.
I have an 05 dodge diesel pickup, no emissions equipment. It gets 4 mpg better than my 17 Chevy diesel. ( the dodge has a bumper and flatbed and is 4dr longbed also, Chevy is stock weight) you can’t tell me 4mpg extra over the life of a vehicle is not a better deal than “reduced emissions” not to mention that the new truck burns 6 gallons of DEF every 3000 miles. In rural Texas you see those dang cardboard def boxes on the side of the road everywhere, they are just now getting it at the pump. These new vehicles are throwaway too, may not have enough metal in them to dump at the scrap yard. My new Chevy Dents if you look at it wrong. The dodge that’s cut firewood in pastures it’s whole life has less dents in it at 13 years old than the 2 year old Chevy that gets the dents from parking lot rash.
Anything the government tells you to do can pretty we’ll be assumed to be putting money in a cronies pocket. Some things they tell us to do are probably for “the good of society” you can rest certain nothing is for the good of you specifically.

They should give me a reward for all the dead trees I have cut up. I even haul 3 cords at a time and try my best to combine deliveries to conserve fuel (because I’m a cheap skate) but we won’t tell them that.