Let’s Make Woodohol for the Germans

Washington Examiner

A group of Wisconsin legislators including Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, are proposing to send $60 million in enterprise tax credits and use the state forestry account to back $150 million in bonds toward building a new $1.9 billion pulpwood facility in Hayward.

The plant work take “low-quality wood and turn it into aviation fuel,” in what is called CORSIA fuel, Felzkowski explained.

The plant would be operated by a German company that has been working with Johnson Timber on the project. The company is also looking at factories in Minnesota and Michigan. More

10 Comments on Let’s Make Woodohol for the Germans

  1. Not Germany’s first rodeo. In 1930s Germany, they used wood gasification as a way to power cars. The “Imbert” wood gas generator allowed wood or charcoal to be converted into a flammable gas to power an internal combustion engine.

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  2. After Wisconsin cuts down a whole lot of its trees, it ought to reverse engineer the process and make wood from aviation fuel. That’s what Wisconsin politicians call “winning”.

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  3. The biomass industry rarely distinguishes between low-quality and high-quality wood. It’s all just feedstock to them.

    Weyerhaeuser used their 99-year forestry leases in Oklahoma and Arkansas to clearcut vast tracts of previously sustainably managed hardwood forests, sending everything to the chipper, rather than waste time and labor picking out valuable old-growth furniture grade hardwoods. They then replanted those now barren areas with fast growing trash trees to feed the pulp mills, harvesting every ten to twenty years. (A cruel activity among local real estate agents was selling cabin property adjacent to these tree farms, a year or two before the next scheduled harvest.)

    Biomass for energy is ecologically devastating. It industrializes and globalizes the behavior of third-world charcoal burners. Before/If they turn to tree farming, they will cut and chip everything else first.

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