Wood Waste to Energy

Wood harvested from sustainable forestry operations and collected from construction and demolition sites is an environmentally friendly energy source.

Managed forests, as opposed to natural forests, can produce much more wood product per acre which means they can absorb more CO2 than a natural forest in a year and over the lifetime of the tree.

Managed forests are harvested at the optimal part of the life cycle of the tree, where it is ideal for use as lumber. In the meantime, the forest is cultivated by thinning out smaller trees and brush etc. After the trees are cut, the limbs, branches, leaves, etc are removed. The thinning and brush are excellent fuel sources, as are chips from the trees themselves.

We can use wood to fuel boilers in power plants instead of fossil fuels.

We can gasify the wood, versus burning it, to conserve much of the carbon that would have converted to CO2 if burned.

We can use the gases created during gasification to generate electricity or we can convert the gases to liquid fuels (diesel, jet fuel, naptha, gasoline) via Fischer-Tropsch processes using catalysts. The resulting fuels are equivalent to fossil fuels but with zero sulfur and with a negative carbon footprint.

Using wood for energy has a negative carbon footprint because the carbon the tree takes out of the air as it grows is less than the amount of carbon we put back into the air as the energy is used. 

In the case of diesel and jet fuel made from wood,  the more the world uses is actually better for the environment.