warm your home without warming the planet
FIREWOOD GREENHOUSE EMISSIONS
Did you know that by using sustainably harvested firewood to heat your home you can help to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. The following pdf: Life Cycle Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Domestic Woodheating, published by the Australian Greenhouse Office shows that firewood can produce the least amount of carbon dioxide (one of the main greenhouse gases) of all heating energy sources. In fact firewood from plantations is greenhouse positive due to the carbon that is sequestered in the tree's root mass. The reason that sustainable firewood is so good for the environment is that all of the carbon that is produced during combustion is reabsorbed by trees as they grow. The only increase in greenhouse gas comes from the diesel that is consumed by trucks when the wood is transported. It is worth noting that even "green" energy generators such as wind farms, hydro stations and solar collectors create a lot of greenhouse gas during manufacture and construction.
Firewood is not often recognised as a practical, readily available source of "green" energy. Unlike other sources of "green" energy, firewood does not need major capital investment or infrastructure. Every tonne of firewood contains approximately 20,000 Megajoules of stored energy. To understand how this stored energy compares to other forms of "green" energy such as wind power electricity generation, you need to convert the electricity produced from Megawatt hours into Megajoules. One Megawatt hour equals 3,600 Megajoules. This means that a typical 660 kW wind turbine will generate the same amount of energy in one year, to that contained in 315 tonnes of firewood. Recent estimates (Driscoll et al 2000) place Australia's annual firewood consumption at around 4,000,000 tonnes. This is equivalent to the annual output of 12,700 (660 kW) wind turbines or six large (500 MW) coal fired power stations.
By using firewood to heat their homes, every Australian can help to reduce this country's reliance on coal-fired power generation.
If you purchase your firewood from FAA certified suppliers, who all comply with a national Code of Practice, you can be confident that the wood has been harvested legally from sustainable sources and that biodiversity and threatened species have been protected. You can also be sure that you are actually getting the wood type and quantity that you pay for, and are not getting ripped off by disreputable wood sellers. By burning properly seasoned firewood, sold by FAA suppliers, in a well maintained fireplace you can enjoy your fire without polluting the air around you with excessive wood-smoke.
CARBON SEQUESTRATION
The CRC for Greenhouse Accounting and the Forest and Wood Products Research and Development Corporation (FWPRDC) have published a good summary of the role of firewood and other forest products in the carbon cycle called Forests, Wood and Australia's Carbon Balance.
This short report titled Carbon Storage and Climate Change has been published by Vision 2020. It focuses on the carbon sequestration values of managed forests and plantations. The benefits of utilising residues and salvage from forestry operations as firewood is noted in the report as: The use of wood waste in bio-fuels and for bio-energy is a further mechanism whereby plantations and native forest residues can be used to lower greenhouse gas emissions, by substituting for the use of fossil fuels.