Fuel for thought

“Despite providing virtually all our heat for thousands of years, wood as a fuel is in its infancy in Britain – somehow we see it as primitive and overlook its fantastic potential.” Gavin Hogg, owner of a wood-heated holiday and activity business in the Brecon Beacons is passionate in the potential for wood and has put his money where his mouth is by installing a state-of-the-art system on an estate which dates back to the 17th century. 
Here he up against powerful resistance, however. Professor James Lovelock, one of the fathers of modern environmentalism, is so dismissive of its potential that he does not even mention it in his latest controversial analysis: “There is no chance wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time,” he says. “Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy.”
Most environmentalists bridle at Lovelock’s dismissal of renewables, but ironically they seem almost as resistant to Hogg’s suggestion. As a nation we generally dismiss it as both damaging and hopelessly antiquated. As a result, until recently the area attracted little research and even less investment, leading to even less media attention. Not surprisingly, therefore, even the most informed audiences tend to raise their eyebrows at the idea of wood as a 21st century fuel.

Millions of comfortable modern homes are still heated by trees

Attitudes are very different on the Continent or North America. Here wood has always been appreciated as a serious energy source and although the days of frontiersmen and peasants huddled over smoking fires may have gone, millions of comfortable modern homes are still heated by trees. Indeed, far from being in decline, increasing numbers of hospitals, factories and even power stations rely on wood. Thanks to climate change fears and high oil prices, such thinking is belatedly finding its way into energy policy on this side of the Channel.

At first glance the suggestion that burning timber might be environmentally beneficial strikes most people as ridiculous. Our views are coloured by dim memories of London smogs and further tarnished by images of smouldering former rainforests. On top of this, doesn’t combustion produces carbon dioxide? And isn’t this the very greenhouse gas that threatens all our futures?

Not at all: certainly the combustion of wood gives off the same carbon dioxide as a fossil fuel, but only that which was absorbed as the tree grew. Moreover, this will still be released whether the tree burns or rots. Provided each felled tree is replaced with a fresh sapling, the process is effectively carbon neutral. In contrast, burning fossil fuels releases carbon locked away millions of years ago, potentially reverting the atmosphere’s gas balance to one not even the early dinosaurs would have recognised.

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