People breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide while trees and plants do the opposite. Forests are sometimes called the ‘lungs of the earth’. This is because growing trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air while at the same time, release oxygen. However, like all living things, trees must one day die. When trees die of old age or from insects, disease, or fire, they release carbon dioxide into the air. In the case of forest fires, very potent greenhouse gases (GHG) such as methane and nitrous oxide are also released. GHG emissions from forests can be delayed or avoided, resulting in a net reduction of GHGs than would otherwise be the case.
Wood from trees can be used for many things. One of the oldest uses is energy. You can feel the energy, for example, that comes from a campfire. People have been using wood to cook and keep warm for a very long time. Burning wood in a campfire is inefficient and releases GHGs. Enclosing a fire in an oven was a technological improvement. In modern times, wood is cleanly burned in large energy plants that reduce air pollution by 99.99% compared to campfires or wildfires. In fact, the cleanest wood-fueled energy plants produce less air pollutants than natural gas furnaces. The wood used in these energy plants comes from trees that are already dead or rotten, or from bits and pieces of the tree that would otherwise go to waste. The energy in this wood, or biomass, is used to make heat energy for district heating where the heat is transported to buildings using underground pipes like what exists in downtown Prince George. The heat can also be used to make electricity in communities like Williams Lake, Merritt, Mackenzie, Kamloops, and many other places in B.C. Sometimes, the smaller, unusable bits of wood are compressed into pellets, transported around the world, and used as a substitute for coal or other fossil fuels to make heat and electricity.
Tree growth is powered by the sun. A tree is like a solar energy battery, made of carbon pulled from the atmosphere. Trees grow generation after generation, over and over, in perpetuity. That is why energy from trees is a sustainable source of green energy, and why the many other thousands of products such as lumber for homes, fibre for cardboard boxes and toilet paper, from trees grown in British Columbia are responsible and ecologically sustainable. The highest value wood is converted into solid wood products like guitars, lumber, and boards. However, there is usually twice as much material that can’t be used for solid wood products. This is why using wood for energy is an important part of the forest products industry. We simply can’t produce solid wood products without a market for all the residuals, or leftover waste wood, and low-grade wood.
According to Dr. Jamie Stephen, Managing Director of TorchLight Bioresources, British Columbia needs to be harvesting more trees, not less, if we want to store more carbon in our forests.
“Counterintuitively, increasing forest harvest, with a focus on thinning – removing dead, diseased, dying, and poor quality trees – will increase the total amount of wood in the forest over time. Trees need light and space to grow. Thinning provides that light and space. It also means we will reduce the risk of losing all the trees to wildfires. Over the past decade, the amount of carbon lost from forests in BC is more than double the total human greenhouse gas emissions in the province. It doesn’t need to be this way, but it does require that people understand humans can have a positive impact on the health and sustainability of the forest.”
British Columbia’s forests provide so many benefits socially for people, economically to help pay for government programs, and environmentally for wildlife, water, biodiversity, and other things we all care for. The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by using B.C.’s forests is making a significant contribution globally by taking climate change action:
● Making sustainable green energy from trees instead of fossil fuels.
● Using wood for building construction instead of concrete or steel which must be mined and are not renewable.
● Using wood for everyday items such as furniture, instead of plastics which come from fossil fuels.
● Reducing emissions by using more wood left over from harvesting and other operations, instead of piling and burning the waste wood.
Jamie Stephen notes that the use of large-scale forest bioenergy has proven highly successful in reducing wildfires and fossil fuel consumption in other countries.
“Sweden and Finland are two other northern, heavily forested countries. In those countries, bioenergy provides 40% of the total energy supply. They are harvesting over four times the amount of wood, relative to forest area, as British Columbia. But unlike BC, which is losing its forests to wildfires, Sweden and Finland have few wildfires and are increasing the amount of carbon stored in the forest each year. Cities like Stockholm, the capital of Sweden and noted as the ‘greenest’ city in the world, are actually heated with wood. Central plants provide heat to the city-owned network of hot water pipes.”
Perhaps B.C. can work to more proactively reduce wildfires, improve forest health and sustainability, and eliminate the use of fossil fuels. Stephen emphasized the importance of utilizing forest biomass as a renewable energy source stating, “bioenergy is a win-win: it reduces carbon emissions while creating economic opportunities in rural communities.” It’s this proactive approach and learning from others is how forestry works for B.C.
