[Azure]

Originally Posted by b1crunch

Right, but opendoor was discussing what is LIKELY happening by using 'simple economics', and you are arguing what SHOULD happen. Those are two different things, and there can be 'common sense' approaches in both situations.

Your line of thinking suggests that a government should step in and regulate the industry to some respect. That's fine.

I guess my question is: What percentage of global carbon emissions are from burning not-so-ethically sourced wood pellets from Canada? It's likely so small that we shouldn't do anything about this problem, because it doesn't have a big enough impact on the total output. Wouldn't you agree?

Exports of wood pellets are increasing, and in 2016 increased by 46% over 2015. Wood pellets are a type of biomass fuel often produced from forestry waste such as wood shavings, bark, and sawdust. In addition to creating value from a waste product, wood pellets can be renewable,Footnote 1 are easy to transport, and are more efficient to combust than wood.

Canada produces wood pellets which can be used as a fuel source for electricity generation and heating.Footnote 2 Most Canadian wood pellets are exported to other countries. These exports increased in 2016 in response to growing global demand for biomass-fired electricity generation to replace coal-fired generation. Annual wood pellet exports increased by 73% in the last five years, growing from 1 369 million kilograms (kg) in 2012 to 2 373 million kg in 2016. Canada is now the second largest wood pellet exporter by weight after the United States (U.S.)

https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-an...2015-2016.html

The Chatham/Woodwell authors note that “the mislabeling of woody biomass as a zero-carbon energy source threatens to push government climate change targets further off track.” Their study estimated that wood pellets produced in the U.S. and burned in the U.K. led to 13-16 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2019 alone — equal to the emissions of up to 7 million cars.

In a first-of-its kind evaluation, the study estimated that 0.8 to 3.6 million tonnes of CO2 were emitted in the U.S. Southeast in 2019 alone from harvesting, producing and shipping wood pellets — all uncounted by the U.S.

“It’s not an enormous number,” co-author Richard Birdsey of Woodwell, who compiled the U.S. estimates, told Mongabay. “But if you look back at what’s been done already, and consider the growth of the [wood pellet] industry, that amount could be 10 to 50 times higher in the years ahead. Then you have a big impact” with global climate repercussions.

Chatham/Woodwell concluded that if the U.K. counted the actual transatlantic emissions from producing and burning wood pellets in 2019, “this would have added 22% to 27% to the emissions from total U.K. electricity generation, or 2.8% to 3.6% of total U.K. greenhouse gas emissions.”

https://news.mongabay.com/2021/10/fo...sions-studies/

Considering the Biden Administration is offering a lot of funding for the wood pellet industry, I'd expect that number to grow substantially. Canada being the second largest exporter of wood pellets is a major part of the problem.

Also if you read into how these pellet burning companies operate you realize they are heavily subsidized and touted as 'green' by the government and that the same governments have setup the rules so that...

But under current U.N. and many national rules, it’s not necessary to count or report carbon emissions from harvesting and transporting trees to factories; processing them into wood pellets; and transporting those pellets thousands of miles, often by ship, across oceans to power plants — nor the greenhouse gas emissions pumped into the atmosphere from burning pellets.

https://news.mongabay.com/2021/11/su...e-say-experts/

Gee, I wonder why its classified as being so 'green.'

Instead of burning it for fuel, wood waste should be primarily used for engineered wood products, an extremely fast growing industry in Canada & Europe, and then whatever waste is leftover for that process should be used to heat those facilities and power their equipment. There are many examples of companies across the world in that market doing exactly that.