From the Neolithic to the beginning of the twentieth century, coppiced woodlands, pollarded trees, and hedgerows provided people with a sustainable supply of energy, materials, and food.
Biomass as fuel is a solution looking for a problem, and trades soil health for nothing compared to electrification.
Biomass was our main fuel for 95% of the history of civilization. These days we have engines that can produce both energy and charcoal, which you can sequester and enrich the land just by tilling it into the soil.
The way capitalism currently does it is by clear-cutting forests, pelleting the wood, and shipping it halfway round the world as a low-quality substitute in coal plants. If we were to localize it and decrease our energy demand by 90% (mostly by living closer to each other, riding bikes and trains, and not being disgustingly wasteful), we would be able to use solar/wind/hydro for much of our power and biomass from pollards to fill in the gaps for base load.
There would be a lot more biomass to collect if we didn't just completely lay waste to forests yeah holy shit. The ecological civilization/sponge city stuff where fauna and flora is returned to urban spaces along with creating better more navigable people oriented spaces... 🤩 it's dreamy
Biomass was our main fuel for 95% of the history of civilization. These days we have engines that can produce both energy and charcoal, which you can sequester and enrich the land just by tilling it into the soil.
The way capitalism currently does it is by clear-cutting forests, pelleting the wood, and shipping it halfway round the world as a low-quality substitute in coal plants. If we were to localize it and decrease our energy demand by 90% (mostly by living closer to each other, riding bikes and trains, and not being disgustingly wasteful), we would be able to use solar/wind/hydro for much of our power and biomass from pollards to fill in the gaps for base load.
There would be a lot more biomass to collect if we didn't just completely lay waste to forests yeah holy shit. The ecological civilization/sponge city stuff where fauna and flora is returned to urban spaces along with creating better more navigable people oriented spaces... 🤩 it's dreamy