A long standing criticism of airy-fairy biomass schemes has been that there isn't enough to go around, which means that there will be competition for the meager supply, and that it will thus be used for purposes that have the highest value. Raising the cost of energy with poorly reasoned regulatory hacks assures that the highest value will be energy production rather than soil management or even food. Dumb, that.

Some are now catching on. Biochar advocates are finally grasping that their dreams of mass production of charcoal for soil improvement - or even just long term storage in the sea or in deep holes in the earth as a climate mitigation hack - are unlikely since charcoal is a near-equivalent to coal and can be used as a substitute for coal in power plants to generate electricity. This is both a more efficient and more valuable use of biomass than production of liquid fuels - ethanol. As noted in the earlier post Torrefaction, the energy folks are way ahead of the soil and climate folks.

Although torrefaction may be new to some, it is really an old process that researchers are breathing new life into . . . “Torrefaction research is old—30 to 40 years,. . . Similar to other research, such as biodiesel, it was sort of shelved when the not-so-renewable alternative fuels were entering the marketplace. . .

In Agri-Tech’s torrefaction process, wood is heated to 300 to 400 degrees Celsius (572 to 752 degrees Fahrenheit), in a low-oxygen environment. The volatile organic compounds and hemicellulose, which are separated from the cellulose and lignin along with water, are combusted to generate 80 percent of the torrefaction process heat. The remaining warm lignin acts as a binder once the torrefied wood is pelletized. . .

Torrefied wood is dense when it’s pelletized, reducing transportation costs of the otherwise bulky material. NCSU and Agri-Tech have found that it costs 23 cents per ton per mile to transport chips and torrefied wood.

The torrified wood is also dry and water resistant because at the high temperatures used in the process, the lignin becomes plastic and is transformed into a binder for individual wood particles. In addition, torrefied wood, which has a low sulfur and mercury content and is carbon neutral, can be easily crushed and doesn’t rot.

Furthermore, torrefied wood has a heating value of 11,000 British thermal units (Btus) per pound, compared with coal at 12,000 Btus per pound, according to NCSU and Agri-Tech. Similar to coal, torrefied wood generates electricity at 35 percent fuel to electricity, compared with untreated wood which has a conversion rate of 23 percent fuel to electricity.

Slow witted folks (like Obama and his administration) fail to grasp the obvious consequences of their political actions, and so just make a mess. They don't help on the single issue they focused on, and create even greater problems in areas that they hadn't considered. The USA has become just another Euro-bumbler carroming from one stupid policy to the next. I'm reminded of a post from a few years ago that discussed the riots taking place in France, in which it was observed that French politics had become "a political system where cliques of individuals fight for office and privilege and little else".