Wood Pellets - British Columbia - The 5th Estate

[Riwaka]

The Fifth Estate (CBC) 43 minute long video item on Pinnacle/ Drax wood pellet manufacturing in British Columbia for burning in the UK and other places.

As there is always.... I think there are a few important voices missing from the video, certainly has the green lens filter on the camera.

Filmed in UK and BC (Vancouver, Prince George/ Quesnel) area 

Loggers/ log truck drivers look like they are doing a good job of keeping the log yard full at the pellet mill.

Why wood from B.C. forests is burning to fuel U.K. energy needs - The Fifth Estate - YouTube

[Kodiakmac]

Yes.  I watched some of that a few nights ago, till I had enough of the CBC's anguished greenness.

What was missing entirely from the conversation in the part I watched, was the utter ridiculousness of shipping wood pellets (made from any source, trash or not) halfway across the world to fuel generators, instead of going with reactors.  

[shelby78]

The Fifth Estate (CBC) 43 minute long video item on Pinnacle/ Drax wood pellet manufacturing in British Columbia for burning in the UK and other places.

As there is always.... I think there are a few important voices missing from the video, certainly has the green lens filter on the camera.

Filmed in UK and BC (Vancouver, Prince George/ Quesnel) area

Loggers/ log truck drivers look like they are doing a good job of keeping the log yard full at the pellet mill.

Why wood from B.C. forests is burning to fuel U.K. energy needs - The Fifth Estate - YouTube

Wow, that's still a show? I remember my parents watching that as a kid. Bet it's just as boring as back then..

[nativewolf]

Yes.  I watched some of that a few nights ago, till I had enough of the CBC's anguished greenness.

What was missing entirely from the conversation in the part I watched, was the utter ridiculousness of shipping wood pellets (made from any source, trash or not) halfway across the world to fuel generators, instead of going with reactors.  

It is ridiculous!  Only works because the EU used to give credits for the biomass plants, it doesn't even pay to send the chips from Maine to UK or EU which is a pretty short trip.  The new nuke reactor being built in UK just had a $3 something billion price increase.  Up to about $30 billion.  For just a 3.2 GWs.  The recent UK wind auction sold about 11 GW for $21 billion (I could be off a bit, I saw it while I was recovering from the cancer surgery) and I think those are locked in auction prices, no building increases, etc.  Not as reliable generation maybe but gesh, give me the wind and some gas peaker plants to smooth it out.  

[SwampDonkey]

They used to have good journalism, but from McKeown onward it diminished rapidly. Hana Gartner had balls, I remember her story on a certain drug cartel in Mexico, she went there face to face. And Eric Malling didn't hold back. It went from finding out stuff to barely revealing it. :D

Nuclear is the way forward, the only reason it costs more to set up is due to safety. Saskatchewan has more uranium than the rest of the known reserves combined. It's got the biggest safety record over the long hall than any of it. :D

[nativewolf]

Nuke is interesting but the cost to obtain safety are just ...mind boggling.  Within this decade the costs of solar/wind plus batteries will be a fraction of nuclear.  Lots of interesting research on small scale reactors but lots of concerns on that route from waste material disposal to securing the reactors.  The good news with those is that you could build the reactors in a factory and ship as a self contained unit.  That would dramatically lower costs.  The costs of disposal- securing spent waste so it can't impact the environment is nearly as high as for a normal nuclear plant though and this is a real cost.  Especially in a day and time where we are worried about terrorists building dirty bombs.   Anyway, a client is part of an investment group pitching these small reactors.  The USA govt is funding the construction of a some as part of one of the recent spending bills.  China is building the first commercial one.  We'll see, something you may find interesting to watch.  

[Don P]

The longest running nuke with the best safety record is under your feet.

[dustintheblood]

The other side of the story from Drax directly:

My statement on Drax’s biomass sourcing

[SwampDonkey]

There's no point in showing clearcuts in their story and make something of it that isn't. It's going to be clearcut anyway whether there is any pellet material or not. It's the dominant silviculture practice up here. Has been all my life and they're still cutting wood for your houses and out houses. ;D When I worked out there, there was piles and piles of non merch. waste material, much of it large woody debris, 'raked' up to be burned, long before the pellet industry existed.

With new technology, much of the waste nuke material is used for something else. France does this. And waste from spent fuel is only 3%. 1,000-megawatt produces 3 cubic meters of waste, power for 1M people for a year. Coal produces 300,000 tonnes of ash and more than 6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide for the same power.

[kantuckid]

I just googled the top ten solar panel mfg's and same for wind turbines. 8 out of 10 solar mfg's are China. Meanwhile the Chinese use vast amounts of coal.  Wind has several Euro, some USA and a few scattered around the world. Wind calls for a new look at how it effects the environment on land IMO. 
 One side of the news is who is going to make war with us (same countries who buy our massive debt) and another is European's needing heat for winter as Russian energy goes kaput. 
The here and now is mostly not solar and wind, maybe later. Wood pellets being in any serious conversation for energy when they are dirtier than coal is weird for me, plus the transportation issue already mentioned. 
One of my sons began his career by supervising scrubber installations for one of the worlds largest power companies that cleaned up coal fired plants. Then the transition to NG began and he became a power plant engineer in place. Some coal went to NG, some were shutdown. If we face another world war, as history tells us, how will we power our country and who will manufacture the stuff we no longer can? 
I can see pellets as viable to some small degree in a regional wood production area lacking any other choices. I don't see a senior citizen toting bags of pellets for heat, how's that work? My area most sawmill waste is made into lawn mulch, which calls for huge amounts of fuel to tote from mills here. The mill down the road from me is a mid-size and yet they have a long row of sawdust trucks with maybe 12-15 employee's total. 

[SwampDonkey]

Some pellet deliveries now are bulk into a hopper, like pumping stove oil into a tank. The bag stuff is for little stoves. My brother has one of those, but he has a basement full of hardwood for a wood fired furnace. I can tell ya, on cold days at 0F or colder that wood furnace is on. :D :D The problem with a stove, is getting heat all through the house. It's hot in one room, then what? Be fine down in Magic Man's turf, where he barely burns a cord of wood all winter. :D Cold floors means cold feet, cold neck and what ever else is vulnerable. :D

[Bruno of NH]

I can't get hemlock right now because the Canadians are buying it at the landing for top dollar.
The forester at the big mill o buy pallet logs from tell me they buy it for the fiber. Remember I'm in New Hampshire. I'm on a list for Southern Vermont hemlock 12" and up with no shake 480 thousand delivered. 
3 years ago it was 180. I hate hemlock but folks around here are hemlock nuts.

[Old Greenhorn]

Hemlock is a love/hate thing for me. I was milling it today. We use it for 'just off the ground' work and garden frames because it lasts a lot longer than pine. I have never used it in a finish application, but that day will come too. It can have some nice grain and color. But it's heavy, has stress, and then there is that shake thing. ;D
 We have tons and tons of it here, wish I could help you out, but the trucking costs kill any possible deal for both parties. >:(

 It grows like a weed here, and the very first log I ever milled was hemlock just to test the mill. I had to clear out about 100 whips and pecker poles of it the set the mill up.

[SwampDonkey]

I can't get hemlock right now because the Canadians are buying it at the landing for top dollar.

I wonder where? Because it was as you say hardly worth cutting up here. Any that got cut went to Maine for more money, but wasn't $480. Down at the Brookside restaurant near Smyrna Maine, you could watch loads of hemlock roll by before the pandemic. Most hemlock up here has been left to stand in clearcuts until it blows over, like the white pines. Although the pines are anchored a lot better. Lots of 30-40" diameter hemlock in those cut blocks. I guess it's the same buying tactics we are used to, where some mills can pay good money for import and pay below break even locally.

According to Marketing board mill prices, hemlock logs are around $330/th. So pulp is a lot less than that. No market for pulp here that I see. Maybe someone in Quebec is buying. Around here the snowshoe hare give young hemlock a bonsai haircut. :D

[kantuckid]

Some pellet deliveries now are bulk into a hopper, like pumping stove oil into a tank. The bag stuff is for little stoves. My brother has one of those, but he has a basement full of hardwood for a wood fired furnace. I can tell ya, on cold days at 0F or colder that wood furnace is on. :D :D The problem with a stove, is getting heat all through the house. It's hot in one room, then what? Be fine down in Magic Man's turf, where he barely burns a cord of wood all winter. :D Cold floors means cold feet, cold neck and what ever else is vulnerable. :D

My Riteway wood furnace, still in our basement and lonely, heated our two-story home easily even on subzero F days. The challenge was when we spent a weekend away or longer which meant that the baseboard heaters (mandated by insurance rules as a non-solid fuel heat source) were turned on and cost money, but actually quite efficient. I installed refinished, antique cast iron floor grates around the home to allow heat to move upward. They still serve some degree of purpose such that our geo heat doesn't linger downstairs. We use ceilings fans in cathedral ceilings year-round to help move air. 
I'm not up on pellet heaters much. 
As a kid I lived with my Grandpa a few years after Granny died around 1952, that very old house (from the earliest days of pre-Kansas) had a coke furnace and chute into a basement bin. 
Now we burn a tiny Jotul stove for fun mostly. I do miss actually "feeling warm" with wood heat but the rest I can easily live without forever.