Miscanthus

[Courier]

Where does it go, or rather, what is it used for? Fuel stock?

Used to go to Drax to be pelleted and then co-fired into the coal mills fluidized bed furnaces , but now it goes direct to Brigg https://www.briggbiomass.com/

 

[redsloe]

there is a miscanthus field not far from here……. was planted in the last gold rush by a company called Bical who IIRC had a lot of EU grant money ……….. their offices, also not far from here, were very impressive, as was the directors car park !!!

note my use of the past tense in that post !

i do quite like the idea and the margin looks ok. Having seen it first hand though the idea of a baler in the field in early spring does look an issue on Clay!

We planted some in 2005and 2006 with an Objective 1 grant through bical they lasted about two years and are probably still around under another name. Haulage kills it for us down here for power stations but most gets used for horse bedding that a local farmer has set up a business for. Burlybed is the name.

We grow it on some wet ground, you generally don't get on the ground until April and the rhizomes do lend good support but it's not perfect!

2021 harvest is about half a ton/a down on last year, but generally GM is about £150/acre with no fert, lime, sprays or anything except cutting baling and for me haulage to the processing plant.

I like it as it's very regular income.

 

[N.Yorks.]

if they burn it where is the capture ?

Think i've seen the same, they are putting it into AD instead of maize. It's annual growth and harvest without the establishment requiremnts for an annual crop. they reckon soil OM is increased, so the net balance is supposed to be carbon negative.....

 

[DaveGrohl]

it’s the same as burning coal really - just a much shorter cycle

why burn anything when power can be produced without doing so at all though ?

When you say shorter cycle you're being a bit silly really aren't you? I understand the point though, but it isn't really a comparison that bears scrutiny in any reasonable sense given the timescales involved. So we don't need to burn anything at all then now? You'd maybe better get on the phone to a few people cos they haven't realised that yet.

 

[Clive]

When you say shorter cycle you're being a bit silly really aren't you? I understand the point though, but it isn't really a comparison that bears scrutiny in any reasonable sense given the timescales involved. So we don't need to burn anything at all then now? You'd maybe better get on the phone to a few people cos they haven't realised that yet.

not really silly - the process of burning carbon locked away millions of years ago is fundamentally the same as the process of burning carbon grown last week - it still releases the sequestered C back to the atmosphere where we don't want it

Increasingly there is little need to burn anything for our energy use, electricity can be produced (and increasingly is) without burning carbon and our transport is increasingly being powered by electricity. Surely this is what we should be aiming to do more in the future ? and use crops to pull as much C as possible from the atmosphere and pump it back into the soil to grow the food we need

 

[Rossymons]

We've looked at it but the cost of establishing it has put me off.

I remember studying it at College 15 years ago and not a lot has changed since then. It's still primarily used for burning or bedding.

On an acreage basis it pays very well compared to traditional cropping or cattle but as I'm tieing in for probably 7 years or more until my investment is cleared it should do.

With the way things are shaping up regarding BPS, ELMs and my other enterprises I'm not in a huge rush to commit.

 

[DaveGrohl]

not really silly - the process of burning carbon locked away millions of years ago is fundamentally the same as the process of burning carbon grown last week - it still releases the sequestered C back to the atmosphere where we don't want it

Increasingly there is little need to burn anything for our energy use, electricity can be produced (and increasingly is) without burning carbon and our transport is increasingly being powered by electricity. Surely this is what we should be aiming to do more in the future ? and use crops to pull as much C as possible from the atmosphere and pump it back into the soil to grow the food we need

I know what you're saying Clive but it all comes back to fossil fuels to start with to some degree, whether it's in the concrete and steel to make the factory to build the solar panels and ship them, or make the concrete base for the turbine, or mining the rare earth metals for the generators, or to burn some of the gas that provides some of the power for those wondrous cars that are apparently powered by the pixies. The whiff of fossil fuels is all over everything we do. You started this by saying you couldn't see the carbon capture with miscanthus.

But, an ancestor of ours living in a mud hut gathering some miscanthus to burn to keep warm IS cycling carbon. He just gathers it from the same patch of land every year as it regrows. Zero climate effect. You're not seriously suggesting that we can be balancing carbon anywhere near that anytime soon are you? Of course, Mother Earth will probably sort all this out in her own good time, but then her time isn't measured in decades, and she can probably cope with it being a couple of degrees warmer and a few less species to boot.