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Comment by tyfon | Hacker News Reader

Burning wood is also CO2 neutral as the forest has captured this CO2 in the last few decades compared to fossil fuel that is accumulated over many millions of years.

In Norway you actually get a higher (greener) energy rating for your house if you have a wood stove, and our electrical power almost entirely hydroelectric.

The article doesn't say, but the wood pollution is relatively minor compared to diesel etc. This Greenpeace article[1] doesn't even mention wood.

[1] https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2016/11/03/causes-londons-a...

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> In Norway you actually get a higher (greener) energy rating for your house if you have a wood stove, and our electrical power almost entirely hydroelectric.

You can possibly get a higher rating when you replace an old stove or an oil stove (parafinbrenner/oljekamin) with "clean-burning" stove, or do I miss something? Otherwise the rating depends on how tight the house is insulated, does it have balanced ventilation and so on.

And CO2-neutral sounds a bit hand-wavy tbh. Sure forest captured it only recently, but there's no advantage releasing it back to atmosphere.

Yes, but if you have electric only and install a "peis" your rating is increased. There are better options regarding particular pollution like the pellet burning oven, but you do get higher rating from wood alone.

The CO2 part is not hand-wavy, unless you clear-cut the forest and do not let it grow back. Unfortunately that is what is happening in the rain forests of the Americas.

The issue with wood in urban areas isn’t CO2, it’s the particulate pollution.

You need to harvest and transport that wood, so it's not CO2 neutral.

PS: Gas also takes a lot of energy to refine and transport so it's worse than the direct CO2 produced during combustion.

I think it's very dependent on where you live.

The way we do it is to walk into the forest with the axe or chainsaw (often electric) and cut down a tree. After that we drag it home and chop it up with an axe using muscle power ;)

There are even books[1] about firewood and how to stack it so it's very ingrained in the culture.

But if it's done industrially with machines then you are very correct.

[1] https://www.bokklubben.no/livsstil-hobby-og-fritid/hel-ved-l...

Which means you burn more calories, so eat more food, which has to be grown — and farming uses fuel too (and transporting, storing, & selling that food, and cooking it, and...)

Calculating the full, e.g., carbon cost of a fuel is difficult!

Sure, but London is not really known for it's forests.

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