Hacker News Reader

The article discusses the switch of a major plant in the UK to compressed wood pellets, sourced from the US. I would think that Germany (and most of Europe) would have a good climate for wood pellet production.

View on HN

are they for real? Wood is so inefficient as fuel that shipping it over anything more than 500km (number taken out of my behind, but it is in the ballpark) takes more energy than is contained in it.

The only reason to do so is to end up with high value in "biofuels" category. Just for show.

Not wood, compressed wood pellets. Energy density seems to be between 50-80% of coal. And remember that fuel is only part of the total cost, especially if the formulas include health costs, pollution or carbon emissions.

Ironically Germany removed a significant amount of forest to create those open pit coal mines.

I'd be curious what the dimensions here are. Surely a few km squares of strip mines isn't going to make a dent in the forested area?

I mean, yeah, it's slightly ironic, but is it not irrelevant?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com