Greens want to clean up new wood heaters

Implement a licence system for wood fired heaters. Make sure people have their chimneys cleaned every year. Educate people on the most efficient use of them (and the do nots).
Rnadom inspections of wood stock to ensure licence holders are burning stuff that should be burnt. Have a phone number that neighbours can ring if they believe there is a problem witht he way a person is using their wood fired heater.
Thats a start. Might even give someone a job. If people dont like it, they can change over to something else to heat their house.

HenryBG said :

ra ra ra communists ra ra ra everyone who disagrees with me is crazy ra ra ra

Yes, grandpa. We know, grandpa.

wildturkeycanoe said :

I agree, I’ve got split A/Cs both ends of the house and they are cheaper to run than gas and probably firewood too. …
Then, I just did some research on your salt batteries….

I didn’t mean salt batteries for PV cells. I was trying to say that Australia should develop solar thermal power with molten salt storage – http://100percent.org.au/bigsolar

A solar thermal station uses the sun to superheat steam to drive turbines, instead of coal. The molten salt stores the heat so generate steam and drive the turbines when the sun isn’t shining. All technology takes a time and expertise to perfect, but the sun’s heat is free and the technology is a lot more viable than the coal industry’s claim of viable carbon sequestration and storage. This would seem to be our best bet for an affordable electricity supply.

Because they can’t be turned on an off, I’m told coal-fired power stations have surplus capacity except at times of peak demand. Therefore, as individuals, saving electricity at other times does nothing to reduce global warming. The best thing we can do as individuals is to reduce the emissions over which we have direct control. Using a pushbike for short distances avoids the emission of greenhouse gases. Wood heaters come into the same category. There’ll be less global warming if we instead lock the carbon up in Australian hardwoods, which can take a long, long time to decay – longer than it will might take for the world’s climate to reach a tipping point under the ‘business as usual’ scenario – http://www.unep.org/newscentre/Default.aspx?DocumentID=2659&ArticleID=8958&1=en

HenryBG said :

Here’s a clue: methane is extremely combustible. My wood heater is not about to let anything combustible wander out my chimney.
I’m not entirely sure you aren’t just having a laugh….but I’m willing to bet you’ve spent time in a secure ward at Woden: you’re clearly nuts.

Why would it be nuts to believe the CSIRO scientists who bought Australian wood heaters and measured the methane that came out of them? Or the many other scientists in many countries who have also measured methane from wood heaters. Smoke is combustible too, and that also comes out chimneys. You are correct that hot hardwood fires produce less methane. The worst thing you can do is stoke the fire up for the night – something that is all too common here.

You should read: http://www.enn.com/health/article/43574
“The second study uncovered a surprising link between prenatal maternal exposure to woodsmoke and poorer performance in markers for IQ among school-age children.”

By calling me nuts, instead of checking the facts, makes me wonder if the effect of woodsmoke exposure continues into adult life.

Nightshade said :

Aside from heater standards, the ACT could give more consideration to flue height and placement than it currently does.

+1

Chip said :

A lot of wood stove emission problems can be vastly reduced by good fuel and good fire management. Perhaps posties can have a pocket full of ‘how to’ booklets and pop them in the box when they notice a smokey fire.

+1

I remember discussion papers and improved emission standards going back quarter of a century. Canberra is still prone to cold air inversions, the geography of the place just doesn’t suit widespread use of wood heaters. People still pump out smoke from their new improved wood heaters, one obvious cause is wet wood as the problem is noticeably worse around here after rain, “education” was going to fix that but they’re still discussing and I’m still waiting.

Regardless of what form of heating is used, it’s going to have to work harder in houses with poor insulation and with orientation that doesn’t take advantage of the sun. That needs addressing too and I’m not convinced the energy rating scheme in its current form is doing that.

Chaz said :

You do realise that the UN uses false data to push their programs forward. Much like most politicians all over the world do.

If you actually bothered to read the report, you’d see that the lead author is a respected NASA scientist who has spent his working life studying atmospheric chemistry and global warming. People study science because they want to know the truth. Using false data with a team of 50 scientists checking the work would be stupid. If found out, it would end his career.

Similarly, if you actually bothered to read the wood heater discussion document, you’d learn about the people who are affected by wood smoke, and the advice of health professionals.

I don’t think the government cares one way of the other about whether you go off into the bush and embrace self-sufficiency. The problem is the increased health costs of woodsmoke in urban areas, and neighbours who get sick from breathing the toxic pollution.

“……..I’m pretty sure whale farts are bad too…

Well, I would think they would be deadly. I am aware that the bubble in a spirit level is a captured fish fart but the mind boggles when one considers the potency of a “krill killer” from a whale.
Whales should be hunted to exstinkshun perhaps.

CaresAboutHealth said :

That’s why a team of 50 experts from the United Nations Environment Program recommended that developed countries phase out wood heaters. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of methane.

I’ve got a challenge for you: try putting some methane in my wood heater and see how much of it ends up in the atmosphere.
Here’s a clue: methane is extremely combustible. My wood heater is not about to let anything combustible wander out my chimney.

I’m not entirely sure you aren’t just having a laugh….but I’m willing to bet you’ve spent time in a secure ward at Woden: you’re clearly nuts.

Chaz said :

You do realise that the UN uses false data to push their programs forward. Much like most politicians all over the world do. As I said before, it is all about money. Plain and simple. The gov would much prefer you and your family be dependent on the state/private business and not to be self sufficient in anything that you do. That way you must go to work, get money & pay your bills/taxes.

Should we also ban back burning then? How about banning volcanoes? I’m pretty sure whale farts are bad too…

After reading the kind of crap “CaresAboutHealth” has to tell us, I’m starting to warm to you climate-change deniers…..

Bottom line is, humans have been burning stuff for millenia. And we’re still around. Breathing in a bit of campsmoke isn’t going to hurt you.
Oh, except there’s “one lady with Asthma” who supposedly can’t hack it. Boohoo.

Chaz is on the money when he says it’s all about money – they want us to be their bill-paying slaves.

Anything that smacks of genuine sustainability will be eliminated with maximum prejudice, whether it be wind farms, wood heaters or solar panels.

The Greens are just as bade as Rupert Murdoch – just remember, we would have had an ETS 2 years ago if it hadn’t been for the Greens voting against it.
Caring for the environment is pretty much a secondary concern for that amalgamation of power-hungry ex-communists these days…

CaresAboutHealth said :

Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has looked into this and claims that electricity would cost less within 10 years if we convert to concentrated solar power (with molten salt to store the heat and keep the generators going when the sun isn’t shining).

Let me get this straight. A somewhat desperate science entertainer (does he even have a real PhD?) knows what no other country in the world does, since they ALL insist on burning coal for just about all their electricity needs.

Get back to us when solar actually produces gigawatts of power day in, day out, just like coal (or nuclear). No solar thermal station has produced more than a few megawatts continuously for 24 hours.

CaresAboutHealth said :

wildturkeycanoe said :

Heat pumps use the same coal fired electricity that column-oil, radiant, fan and bar heaters do.

As do computers – you obviously have no objection to those!

The figures I’ve seem suggest that our dependence on coal-fired electricity has more to do with the influence of the mining lobby than any real cost difference. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has looked into this and claims that electricity would cost less within 10 years if we convert to concentrated solar power (with molten salt to store the heat and keep the generators going when the sun isn’t shining).

My main objection to coal-fired power is the global warming. But if you use an efficient heat pump, you can get 1 kW of heat for the lounge room while using just 200 W of electricity. This is not only the cheapest option (unless you collect your own firewood) but also causes the least global warming and the least damage to the health of other people.

I call your expert and raise you five scientists. [Just kidding] I agree, I’ve got split A/Cs both ends of the house and they are cheaper to run than gas and probably firewood too. But I can’t choose where my power comes from. Regardless of whether my electricity bill says “green power” or not, it comes from the same place as next door. In a fantasy world if they’d forced everyone onto buying “green power”, there is not that much available on the grid, so it’d be a farce. Snowy Hydro produces renewable energy, yet they are listed in the top polluters and will have to pay the carbon tax. Perplexing? I’m baffled and confused by the whole debate and debacle.
Then, I just did some research on your salt batteries. Our house would probably require about $7k of batteries and then the solar setup on top. I tried to work it but my head started to hurt after I got to about somewhere between $10k and $20k for the panels and associated gear. Well, that’s somewhere around 10-15 years before it pays itself off. But by then the batteries and solar system will have reached their expiry and I’ll be no better off. That also depends on how long the salt batteries last [untested technology] and where I’ll find this money to help our environment.
Whether it’s the government’s way or the environmentalist’s way, everyone will have to pay.

CaresAboutHealth said :

HenryBG said :

There is no such thing as “causing global warming in the short term”. There are activities that release CO2, and there are activities that sequester it, period.

I’m talking about the activities that emit methane (CH4) and black carbon. Only about half of all global warming is caused by CO2. In the first 20 years after being emitted, methane causes 72 to 100 times as much global warming as the same amount of CO2. This additional warming could increase melting of polar icecaps and lead to the release of frozen methane under the sea and in permafrost, leading to even more warming, melting even more frozen methane and so on until the climate reaches a point of no return.

That’s why a team of 50 experts from the United Nations Environment Program recommended that developed countries phase out wood heaters. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of methane.

But then, you obviously haven’t read the Wood Heater Discussion paper that was provided so that people could have an intelligent discussion of the facts, issues and policy options.

You do realise that the UN uses false data to push their programs forward. Much like most politicians all over the world do. As I said before, it is all about money. Plain and simple. The gov would much prefer you and your family be dependent on the state/private business and not to be self sufficient in anything that you do. That way you must go to work, get money & pay your bills/taxes.

Should we also ban back burning then? How about banning volcanoes? I’m pretty sure whale farts are bad too…

wildturkeycanoe said :

Heat pumps use the same coal fired electricity that column-oil, radiant, fan and bar heaters do.

As do computers – you obviously have no objection to those!

The figures I’ve seem suggest that our dependence on coal-fired electricity has more to do with the influence of the mining lobby than any real cost difference. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has looked into this and claims that electricity would cost less within 10 years if we convert to concentrated solar power (with molten salt to store the heat and keep the generators going when the sun isn’t shining).

My main objection to coal-fired power is the global warming. But if you use an efficient heat pump, you can get 1 kW of heat for the lounge room while using just 200 W of electricity. This is not only the cheapest option (unless you collect your own firewood) but also causes the least global warming and the least damage to the health of other people.

HenryBG said :

There is no such thing as “causing global warming in the short term”. There are activities that release CO2, and there are activities that sequester it, period.

I’m talking about the activities that emit methane (CH4) and black carbon. Only about half of all global warming is caused by CO2. In the first 20 years after being emitted, methane causes 72 to 100 times as much global warming as the same amount of CO2. This additional warming could increase melting of polar icecaps and lead to the release of frozen methane under the sea and in permafrost, leading to even more warming, melting even more frozen methane and so on until the climate reaches a point of no return.

That’s why a team of 50 experts from the United Nations Environment Program recommended that developed countries phase out wood heaters. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of methane.

But then, you obviously haven’t read the Wood Heater Discussion paper that was provided so that people could have an intelligent discussion of the facts, issues and policy options.

A lot of wood stove emission problems can be vastly reduced by good fuel and good fire management. Perhaps posties can have a pocket full of ‘how to’ booklets and pop them in the box when they notice a smokey fire.

Re firewood often being sourced from standing paddock trees a long way from here – what is the plan for all that wood stockpiled at the corner of Lady Denman Dr and Cotter Road? There is enough there to last for ages. Better to split it, season it and use it locally than have it destroyed by the white ants or a school holidays special fire.

gasman said :

wildturkeycanoe said :

Wood pellets – sawdust – How much electricity [coal fired] is used to create the sawdust, dry it and then compact it into these pellets? Probably worse in the big picture for the environment.

The sawdust is made as a waste by-product from the timber industry. It is always being generated and the bulk of it is simply burnt on-site as waste.

The responsible pellet makers use their own pellets to dry the wood. The only bit that requires fossil fuel is the transport of pellets from manufacturer to consumer. If we had a large enough base of people in one city, a single truckload could supply dozens of homes for an entire year. Minimal fossil fuel use, spread amongst many.

You’d best do some research. The sawdust has to be put through a hammermill to pulverise it, a highly powerful electricity chewing machine [I’ve worked on them before] and then pressed. The presses also require hydraulic pumps again using power from the grid.
To get 5.2MWh/t from pellets, whereas 5.5 MWh/t for firewood that requires less manufacturing seems to be wasteful and argues against pellet fuels. [Wikipedia and Firewood Ass. Aust. websites for info]
Still, I can’t see any clear or easy solutions, so someone should come up with some brilliance before we waste more CO2 arguing about it on our coal powered computers and servers….

Chaz said :

The problem is you’re not paying an electricity company for the privilege of heating your home. If ACTEW sold wood, then I’m sure wood heaters would be a-ok.
It’s all about money and nothing else.

Next you’ll be telling us that if ACTEW sold cigarettes they’d be OK too!!!

I suppose they are not anything like as bad as woodsmoke: “Organic extracts of ambient particulate matter (PM) containing substantial quantities of woodsmoke are 30- fold more potent than extracts of cigarette smoke condensate in a mouse skin tumor induction assay (Cupitt et al., 1994)” http://woodsmoke.3sc.net/toxic-chemicals

But both contain toxic chemicals that can damage unborn children and lead to asthma, reduced IQ and behavioural problems years later at age 5 or 6 – http://woodsmoke.3sc.net/pah

Most people who care about their health and their family’s health will want follow the recommendations of health authorities such as the Australian Lung Foundation and avoid both cigarette and wood smoke.

aceofspades said :

I don’t mean to appear naive here but I just fail to understand. As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels. Why is there a push away from fire places and pot belly stoves when I would have thought them to be the most natural and environmentally friendliest form of heating that there is?

Most people don’t have a bushfire raging next door to their house for 4-5 months of the year. Clearly you don’t live downwind of someone whose chimney blows smoke through your yard all winter, and prevents you from using your property that you paid for just as the neighbours paid for theirs. Please try to extend some empathy towards those who do.

Aside from heater standards, the ACT could give more consideration to flue height and placement than it currently does.

aceofspades said :

I don’t mean to appear naive here but I just fail to understand. As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels. Why is there a push away from fire places and pot belly stoves when I would have thought them to be the most natural and environmentally friendliest form of heating that there is?

The problem is you’re not paying an electricity company for the privilege of heating your home. If ACTEW sold wood, then I’m sure wood heaters would be a-ok.

It’s all about money and nothing else.

wildturkeycanoe said :

Wood pellets – sawdust – How much electricity [coal fired] is used to create the sawdust, dry it and then compact it into these pellets? Probably worse in the big picture for the environment.

The sawdust is made as a waste by-product from the timber industry. It is always being generated and the bulk of it is simply burnt on-site as waste.

The responsible pellet makers use their own pellets to dry the wood. The only bit that requires fossil fuel is the transport of pellets from manufacturer to consumer. If we had a large enough base of people in one city, a single truckload could supply dozens of homes for an entire year. Minimal fossil fuel use, spread amongst many.

CaresAboutHealth said :

….. phase out wood heaters because of their methane and black carbon emissions…….
With firewood now costing $250 a tonne, old smokey can burn up $1000 of wood a year, and add to your neighbours’ medical bills. …
… The same can’t be said for the ACT’s firewood. It comes from dead standing paddock trees (that aren’t being renewed) and is now so scarce that it often has to be trucked from 400 km away…….

What a huge load of steaming horsepoo. Is this the kind if fantasy that’s used in developing Greens policy?

“Black carbon emissions”?
Burning 4 tonnes of wood in one year?
Medical bills?
400Km away?

ROTFL

CaresAboutHealth said :

Burning wood causes a lot more global warming in the short term than generating the same amount of useful heat from gas or electricity.

What is this gibberish?
Care to provide any numbers behind that?

You can get 10MJ/kg from wood.

Coal, on the other hand, is burnt; electricity is generated generally with 60% loss of energy; electricity is transmitted along power lines, where loads of energy vanishes through transmission loss; then the electricity is used by an appliance to generate heat with yet another layer of efficiency loss.

The reason we currently use coal for heating is because it is cheap – *NOT* because it emits less CO2 than burning wood.

You do realise that people wouldn’t be burning 70-year-old trees?
You do realise that most of the carbon sequetered by a tree is sequestered during the early years of rapid growth?
You do realise that if you’re burning 1 tree, you can be growing 10 trees at the same time to replace it?

There is no such thing as “causing global warming in the short term”. There are activities that release CO2, and there are activities that sequester it, period.

The Greens on this issue are as out-of-whack with reality as they are with the issue of fuel-efficient cars: cars with whacking great big batteries in them are responsible for far more emissions than cars without. And there are plenty of cars without batteries in them that use less fuel than the battery cars.

Anyway, burning wood for fuel does nothing nature doesn’t do anyway. And the neurotics who imagine the woodsmoke is somehow killing them must get really upset during winter controlled burns where vast amounts of fuel is burnt very inefficiently producing vast amounts of smoke.

Wood is the most personally sustainable way to generate energy. You need about 1 15-year-old tree every year. So, each household needs to manage a stand of about 15 trees. In other words, we need 1/8th of an acre of managed forest per household, or, about 5,000 hectares.

Come the oil-shock and disintegration of the global economy (which is well on its way), we’ll all be using wood for fuel because there won’t be many other choices, and the Greens will have no say in it.

arescarti42 said :

Depending on where you get the wood from, it can be a more sustainable fuel than gas/electricity.

It depends not just on having a sustainable wood supply (and there’s not many of them here!) but also on the amount of methane and soot produced when you burn. As outlined in the Discussion Paper (http://act.greens.org.au/sites/greens.org.au/files/Wood%20Heater%20Discussion%20Paper%20-%20FINAL%20-%20June%202012.pdf) if your fire smokes you are likely to cause more global warming from methane and black carbon emissions than you would by using gas or a reverse cycle system.

The other problem is that burning wood cannot be sustainable if it causes more short-term global warming and leads to a tipping point in global temperatures that wrecks the climate. As one person said it doesn’t take long to “to burn a 70-year-old tree, and it takes 70 years to grow it back.” http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericagies/2012/05/22/massachusetts-addresses-biomass-loophole-and-limits-subsidies/

That isn’t sustainable on a planet where the climate is likely to reach a tipping point within 40 years. Burning wood causes a lot more global warming in the short term than generating the same amount of useful heat from gas or electricity.

So the best test is whether the trees from which you are harvesting will have grown enough over the coming year to have absorbed all the emissions from this winter’s burning. If not, or if your fire smokes, other sources of heat are likely to be better for the climate and so be more sustainable.

Walker said :

Try this
http://region.com.au/wood-pellet-heating-in-canberra/52307
(Who should I mail that to? Such a good thing to look into)

There’s a group in Ballarat trying to do this – http://www.breaze.org.au/
And proposals for a similar scheme in Armidale. I’m told there was a successful demonstration by Parkwood Pellet Fires last year at Armidale’s Sustainable Living Expo and that Parkwood can now offer a pretty good deal for a bulk-buys – not much more money than the horribly polluting wood stoves you can buy here.

As noted in the gasman’s post, it’s now a pretty affordable and environmentally-friendly option, if you can bulk-buy the heaters and organize a truckload of pellets, which could heat about 20 homes for the winter.

The Greens want to improve health by expanding the subsidy to remove smoky wood heaters – no reason why pellet stoves shouldn’t qualify, as well as electric heat pumps and the current subsidies for gas.

For all you “Green” energy advocates, please consider the following.

Solar/concentrated solar is still too expensive, or we’d have it installed already. Also, unless you have the money and space to store it, doesn’t work at night time when you most need it.

Wood pellets – sawdust – How much electricity [coal fired] is used to create the sawdust, dry it and then compact it into these pellets? Probably worse in the big picture for the environment.

Heat pumps use the same coal fired electricity that column-oil, radiant, fan and bar heaters do.

Until we have enough solar power stations to eliminate the need for coal, there are no real alternatives to good ol’ fashioned wood burning, except maybe natural gas. But this too is very expensive to run and has bad health effects – persistent mould in the house from the moisture created from combustion [even in flued systems], headaches and a poor quality heat. The feel good green ideas will not warm up your house as well as some nice redgum or yellowbox. Incidentally, you can get it within 400km away, what a ridiculous statement!

If there was an efficient miracle cure for this problem, word would be out by now and it’d be mandatory on all new houses, BUT we have no decent affordable solution. And, until we stop people in countries such as China using coal for domestic cooking and heating, our little footprint’s reduction is negligible in reducing global emissions.

If firewood was a bit cheaper, maybe people wouldn’t use old pallets and green garden waste to heat their houses.

CaresAboutHealth said :

Solar cells and concentrated solar thermal power, recommended by Beyond Zero Emissions, are great initiatives for renewable energy. The same can’t be said for the ACT’s firewood. It comes from dead standing paddock trees (that aren’t being renewed) and is now so scarce that it often has to be trucked from 400 km away.

According to Matthew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions, heat pumps are one of the most environmentally friendly heating systems we have because they use a small amount of electricity to move heat from outside to inside the house. In other countries, they attract renewable energy subsidies. – http://region.com.au/greens-want-to-clean-up-new-wood-heaters/74239

They certainly seems a better option (at perhaps half the cost of buying firewood) and save us from the sad tales of ill health some Canberra residents are reporting in the Greens Woodsmoke Policy Launch document http://region.com.au/greens-want-to-clean-up-new-wood-heaters/74239

Quoting Beyond Zero Emissions raises eyebrows.

And quoting Matthew Wright draws an instant fail.

We’ve been through the wood heater thing many times before here and in the papers. The pros the cons the this the that.

Try this
http://region.com.au/wood-pellet-heating-in-canberra/52307
(Who should I mail that to? Such a good thing to look into)

But any way you cut it, a resident of fresh-air-capital Canberra should not have to hold their breath. Or have their washing fumigated, for some there’s breathing problems, and the rest of it.

These issues aside, aceofspades, good question. In a nutshell, if you burn trees at the rate you’re regenerating trees, the accounting works out, also better than suddenly opening lots of ancient locked up fossils.

I think its one of those issues that even environmental types can’t agree on. I burn wood and consider it ‘green’ because its only releasing carbon that was captured in the last century or so.
It can’t be for everyone though. There is only so much wood, and it only grows so fast. By buying wood we contribute to the likelihood of some lumberjack company paying a politician money to cut down an otherwise nice bit of bushland.

There are real problems if you want to burn it in a city though. Health problems. Where I am there is plenty of space and wind, so no worries.

aceofspades said :

I don’t mean to appear naive here but I just fail to understand. As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels. Why is there a push away from fire places and pot belly stoves when I would have thought them to be the most natural and environmentally friendliest form of heating that there is?

Do you live upwind from someone using a wood heater? I do. She swears she’s only burning leftover wood from her garden and delivered firewood but the smoke that’s being blown in our yard is toxic enough to give everyone headaches and make the kids complain about feeling sick.

aceofspades said :

I don’t mean to appear naive here but I just fail to understand. As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels. Why is there a push away from fire places and pot belly stoves when I would have thought them to be the most natural and environmentally friendliest form of heating that there is?

I haven’t read this recent release, but usually the concern with wood fired heating is local pollution. Tuggeranong Valley is particularly good at developing an inversion layer and trapping smoke….

aceofspades said :

I don’t mean to appear naive here but I just fail to understand. As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels. Why is there a push away from fire places and pot belly stoves when I would have thought them to be the most natural and environmentally friendliest form of heating that there is?

I think it has a lot to do with the adverse health effects of wood smoke…
http://www.lungfoundation.com.au/lung-information/patient-educational-material/fact-sheets/100
http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/factsheets/environmental/wood_smoke_pub.html
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Wood_fires_and_breathing_problems

And the wholesale pillaging/destruction of native woodlands for fuel – there is more demand for firewood every year then there is sustainable supply of firewood.
http://www.habitatadvocate.com.au/
http://www.environment.gov.au/land/publications/pubs/firewood-impacts.pdf

You only need to look at large swathes of Victoria or NSW countryside, the island of Madagascar or lost areas of the Amazon to see what can happen when large scale, uncontrolled looting of forests for fire fuel is allowed to take place.

aceofspades said :

I don’t mean to appear naive here but I just fail to understand. As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels. Why is there a push away from fire places and pot belly stoves when I would have thought them to be the most natural and environmentally friendliest form of heating that there is?

It’s a perfectly legitimate question. Lots of Canberra is laid out in valleys. Amanda’s initiative is about reducing the smoke that sits in these areas and causes quite significant air pollution and health problems.

aceofspades said :

I don’t mean to appear naive here but I just fail to understand. As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels. Why is there a push away from fire places and pot belly stoves when I would have thought them to be the most natural and environmentally friendliest form of heating that there is?

The Greens will allow wood fires only in caves provided you live in them as well.

Snake venom is natural, but it’s bad for our health.

Slow combustion stoves may seem natural, but a team of 50 scientists from the UN Environment program recommended phasing them out in developed countries to reduce global warming and improve health. Over 2,000 measures were whittled down to the best 16, one of which was to phase out wood heaters because of their methane and black carbon emissions.

With firewood now costing $250 a tonne, old smokey can burn up $1000 of wood a year, and add to your neighbours’ medical bills. One lady’s asthma was triggered when her neighbour installed a modern “clean burning” wood heater in 2010. She developed bronchitis and needed multiple treatments with antibiotics – http://woodsmoke.3sc.net/experien

Solar cells and concentrated solar thermal power, recommended by Beyond Zero Emissions, are great initiatives for renewable energy. The same can’t be said for the ACT’s firewood. It comes from dead standing paddock trees (that aren’t being renewed) and is now so scarce that it often has to be trucked from 400 km away.

According to Matthew Wright, executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions, heat pumps are one of the most environmentally friendly heating systems we have because they use a small amount of electricity to move heat from outside to inside the house. In other countries, they attract renewable energy subsidies. – http://region.com.au/greens-want-to-clean-up-new-wood-heaters/74239

They certainly seems a better option (at perhaps half the cost of buying firewood) and save us from the sad tales of ill health some Canberra residents are reporting in the Greens Woodsmoke Policy Launch document http://region.com.au/greens-want-to-clean-up-new-wood-heaters/74239

aceofspades said :

As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels.

I think you’ll find the major objection with wood heaters is the particulate pollution/smoke they produce, which gets caught in valleys and is bad for public health, rather than Co2 emissions.

Depending on where you get the wood from, it can be a more sustainable fuel than gas/electricity.

Fully support the phasing out of heaters that are damaging to the environment and to our health.

One way is to support the introduction of wood pellet stoves. Wood pellet stoves are common in Europe and Canada, but are almost unheard of in Australia. They are the most environmentally-friendly way of actively (i.e. excluding passive solar) heating a home.

Wood pellets are made from waste sawdust from sawmills, dried and compressed to a standard size. This is sawdust that would otherwise be burnt on-site at the sawmill as waste.

The pellets require a special wood pellet stove. Because of the extremely high surface area for combustion and high heat, they burn extremely well. Particulate emissions from a wood pellet heater are on par or better than for a gas heater and far better than a standard wood stove.

Ironically, most of Australia’s wood pellets are exported, as there is almost no support for these heaters in Australia.

Wood pellet stoves compare very favourably with other fuels for price, and better than other fuels for carbon emissions. Furthermore, the stoves themselves are not fugly – in fact rather stylish. They are push-button start, thermostat controllable and some can be remotely controlled via a phone app.

eg look up Thermorossi and Ravielli/Ecoteck

I listened to A. Bresnan’s interview on 666 today and noted that she didn’t say anything about subsidies for renewable energy mechanisms – could be in the report but have yet to read it. No buy back scheme will work unless it’s loads of cash – and why would you trade in old smokey for something that is more expensive to run, i.e. electric or gas.

We have recently installed a system in our roof that pushes hot air down in winter and hot air out in Summer. Works really well, even when the sunshine is short lived like at the moment. Of course its not going to heat the house perfectly all the time – especially on a grey day, but it’s using a renewable energy source instead of whacking on the heater all the time.

I don’t mean to appear naive here but I just fail to understand. As bush fires naturally occur in nature wouldn’t the burning of wood be more environmentally friendly then the burning of fossil fuels. Why is there a push away from fire places and pot belly stoves when I would have thought them to be the most natural and environmentally friendliest form of heating that there is?