Burning Wood for Energy

Is burning wood for energy a good idea?  Certainly, using wood, wood pellets, and charcoal for heating and cooking can replace fossil fuels and may result in lower CO2 emissions overall. Also, wood can be harvested from forests and woodlots that must be thinned, or from urban trees that fall or must be cut down. However, wood smoke contains harmful pollutants such as carbon monoxide and particulate matter. It is true that modern wood-burning stoves, pellet stoves, and fireplace inserts can reduce the amount of particulates emitted from burning wood, and while wood and charcoal are major cooking and heating fuels in poorer countries, we must be very careful not to harvest wood faster than trees can grow as it causes deforestation. Because burning wood releases about 75 percent more CO₂ than natural gas, efficient gas furnaces or fireplace inserts will emit only around half to two-thirds as much CO₂ per unit of heat as the best wood stoves, while natural gas emits far less toxic material than even the cleanest wood stoves. Thus, as we plan for the future, we need to consider all alternatives, and where wood is necessary, we must plant faster-growing trees for fuel and cooking stoves so we can slow deforestation and improve the environment.

With over 150 experts worldwide, Lee Enterprises Consulting has experts in many specific clean and renewable areas, including anaerobic digestion, fermentation, biomass, conversion technologies for things like tires and railroad ties, organic synthesis, fuel additives, ethanol gas, biodiesel fuel including algae biofuels, solid-state and industrial fermentation, green energy grants, ag-biotech, agricultural waste, alcohol fuels, alternative proteins and animal-free products, sustainable foods, beverage fermentation, biocatalysis, biodiesel conversion, biogas production, biomass power, carbon intensity, co2 utilization, combined heat & power, Fischer-Tropsch technology, food waste, hydrothermal carbonization, industrial enzymes, landfill management, microbial fermentation, organic synthesis, plastic pyrolysis, plastic recycling, plastic waste, pyrolysis oil, reactor design, renewable identification number, the Renewable Fuel Standard (rfs2), solid recovered fuels, torrefaction and torrefied biomass, waste to energy, and waste-to-hydrogen.   This is a multidisciplinary group of green energy consultants that is a virtual “one-stop-shop” for any client need and handles projects of all types and sizes.

Look at our experts and the services we provide.  Most of our experts are also available to advise and serve as expert witnesses in bioeconomy litigation matters.  For the larger projects, we specialize in putting together full-service, interdisciplinary teams with one point of contact.  See a video about LEC here.  Call us at 1+ (501) 833-8511 or email us for more information.