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Burning wood is not ‘renewable energy,’ so why do policymakers pretend it is?
(news.mongabay.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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The writer of this article is an idiot who doesn't understand that there is a difference between "renewable energy" and "clean energy".
Of course burning wood pellets is renewable energy. It's wood. We can literally grow it. We will not "run out" because we can just grow more, it takes like 2 years to grow trees for that purpose. Just because where we grow it may have changed doesn't mean it's not renewable.
What it isn't, is clean. Burning wood releases a shit ton of carbon. But it's still renewable.
If we are looking at just the carbon though, that carbon is collected by the 2 year old trees, right? So it's net carbon-neutral in that sense.
The tree itself would in theory have consumed as much carbon as it releases when burned, but when you take into consideration harvesting and processing, then it's still a net producer.
It should also be noted that the order of magnitude is very different to fossil fuels. And at least in theory the harvesting and progressing can be done using renewable energy sources (at least for large parts of it). We are very far from actually doing this though.
The main issue in practice is the combustion byproducts and fine particulates.
is it from the machinery using fossil fuels?