carbon limited

Posted in agriculture, biofuel, biomass, climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy, sustainability | Tagged building magazine, michael willoughby, phil clark | 6 Comments

6 Responses

1. on August 22, 2008 at 9:59 am | Reply Jason Hawkes

   The article doesnt explain how that figure was arrived at either. Have you contacted him? If 20 miles is taken as an established ‘fact’, it could have quite serious implications for biomass uptake

   
   
2. on August 22, 2008 at 10:43 am | Reply Casey

   I’m meeting up with them today and will see if I can find out.

   
   
3. on August 22, 2008 at 1:36 pm | Reply Casey

   Michael’s agreed to write a follow up either here or on the Sustainability Blog.

   
   
4. on August 26, 2008 at 2:04 pm | Reply Michael Willoughby

   Thanks for the opportunity to respond to this. The idea of the ‘sustainability’ of various fuels is a tricky and controversial topic.

   In putting together my piece I spoke to various members of the local wood fuel industry, many of whom gave me a figure of between 20 and 30 miles as the maximum distance that wool fuel should be transported.

   The key thing about the figures worked out by Casey here is that they are great for wood pellets, which are a highly concentrated, though more energy intensive, way of using wood for fuel. But they don’t work for the lighter chip, and not just for carbon reasons.

   In fact, I should have made clear that I was talking about providing power for small-scale developments here – schools, 10 or so houses, an old people’s home – rather than the large scale wood pellet-powered plants such as those planned by Helius Energy for the Tees and Port Talbot which will be fed by the aforementioned pellet. These can be transported huge distances with carbon efficiency, as he suggests, particularly on the oceans, as these will be.

   But the smaller folks I talked to were all involved in setting up ‘hubs’ which are a way of putting local wood fuel producers in touch with wood fuel suppliers. They help local estate managers to improve the quality of their woodland and take care of over-dark, undermanaged woodland which leads to species decline.

   The hub also provides storage facilities for the fuel itself, where it can be stored in the dry and dried if needs be. The hub providers keep it as simple as possible, collecting wood from the boundaries of estates on a trailer, taking them to the hub to dry and then chipping them into the different piles of wood in the hub. Pellets are not a part of the equation.

   Clearly, for this nascent industry, the hubs are important in securing energy supply because a hub manager can ensure that he has sufficient ‘spokes’ leading into it to make sure his wheel goes around without bumpiness. Fuel consumers can come into his barn and look at the piles of chip sitting there and return happy.

   The 20 – 30 mile figure comes from several factors pertinent to local mid-sized supply as follows

   1) Transport

   Above this distance, you have to switch from tractor power to truck power, causing problems in the highly rural areas in which these schemes will operate. Also, this kind of transport is just not the kind of thing that your farmer or local hub will have access to without extra outlay.

   2) Carbon and energy usage

   Talking of pellets, David Clubb, Northwoods Director at Rural Development Initiatives, says that 2.5-4% of potential energy is used in creating chip. He also adds that although there is 38.6MJ/litre energy in diesel, that’s for combustion, not transportation. Large diesel trucks get 45% efficiency, he reckons. With a 10mpg transport efficiency of 10mpg for a 20t load, then you’d get a maximum distance of 984km.

   And if you drive 45km loaded with chip, he reckons that you have used up about 10% of the energy in the wood. At 90km, he reckons that would be about 20%. This brings us to …

   3) Cost

   Julian Morgan-Jones of South East Wood Fuel says that above the 20-30 mile range, it becomes less affordable to transport chip. With wood chip boilers costing around 10 times gas-fired boilers, cost of chip is a massive viability issue.

   Clubb adds that with diesel at 120p/litre, it would cost you £267 for those 948km.

   But at the end of the day, the ‘story’ about local wood fuel is one about bringing self-regulation, local employment, local networks, proper management, back to the countryside.

   Casey laughingly suggested that the 20-30 mile restriction was a ‘visceral’ reaction from industry, but he was sort of correct. A lot of the suppliers becoming involved in schemes are farmers or golf courses or estate managers. Local wood fuel is really about trying to use resources which NEED using and can provide a benefit to end users, local employment, local environment and, ultimately, wood fuel consumers.

   For once, the multinationals – more than 30 miles away – are not part of the equation (yet). They don’t make sense because they can only bring cost benefits to the table, and those getting involved in heating their schemes with wood fuel from down the road are looking for something more than another lump of global cargo shipped in on container from wherever. They want to do something for their immediate surroundings.

   
   
5. on August 26, 2008 at 3:04 pm | Reply Building Mag responds « carbon limited

   […] energy, sustainability | Tags: building magazine, michael willoughby | by Casey In response to my post about his 20-mile claim, Michael Willoughby at Building has responded extensively in the comments – […]

   
   
6. on September 24, 2008 at 9:25 am | Reply Mark Lebus

   Michael

   I think you put forward good reasoning for the 20-30 miles. It is all about decentralisation of heat energy and has the ability to positively affect many sectors in the “local” environment. where I think we all need to be careful is that the perception can become one of rural = rustic = disorganised or unstructured which it is not and wants to be dispelled before it manifests into something else…

   Mark Lebus, LC Energy

   (from an email to Michael, posted by Casey)