Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
operatives and electric meter measurers, or the computers used to provide environmental
statements and calculate electricity bills. All this expense is required in order to turn three
square metres of land in one country into an hour of a one bar electric fire in another, or
alternatively a five mile journey into work in an electric car.
DEFRA, however, has done some work on these issues. A report entitled
Biomass: Car-
bon Sink or Carbon Sinner
concludes that when SRC chips are used to generate electricity
they give off between 15 per cent and 65 per cent of the GHG emissions of a gas power sta-
tion per unit of energy, and the emissions from clean waste wood chips are broadly similar.
The report states that 'transporting fuels over long distances … can reduce the emissions
savings made by the same fuel by between 15 and 50 per cent compared to best practice'.
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The permaculturist, on the other hand, thinks first of all of adapting to the resources
nature provides, even if they are a bit awkward or fiddly. Sixty years ago the laurel planted
for pheasant cover at the aforementioned Happy Valley was regularly cut down by local
landless people who bundled it into faggots and took it home to burn. I do not approve
of the economic system which gave the landlord ownership of all the fine timber, and left
only the sneddings for the poor, but there is a lot to be said for a land management sys-
tem which finds an economic use for its produce and wastes little. Nowadays laurel, like
rhododendron, causes a problem because it grows out of control, suffocating mature trees
and shading out all competition. When it is cut down, it is usually by volunteers or subsid-
ized workers who do not take the timber back to their centrally heated homes, and who, in
the case of volunteers, receive nothing more for their pains than the pleasure of physical
work in the countryside. The same is true for substantial quantities of the timber and other
biomass in the countryside, which are cut down as part of a subsidized or voluntary man-
agement programme, and then left in a heap, or burnt.
In a situation where sources of zero carbon energy became scarce and valued, the fiddli-
ness would be less of an economic constraint - but the transport costs over a given distance
would increase. There are two methods for lowering transport costs: one is to make char-
coal on site, which lowers the weight of the firewood so that it burns hotter and more effi-
ciently, but is of lower gross calorific value. Charcoal-burning is a semi-industrial activity
which requires all the timber to be of one size for a successful burn, and cannot cope too
well with the ' fiddliness' of biodiverse waste wood; but when combined with other cop-
pice crafts a very high percentage of the timber produce is used.
The other way of lowering transport costs is to bring people closer to the resources in-
stead of bringing the resources to the people. The RCEP observes:
In those areas close to forests the benefits of using an existing local resource for energy
production are clear ... The rural location of most forests makes them ideally placed primar-
ily (but not exclusively) to serve rural communities. There is an opportunity to link biomass
energy policy with rural regeneration and fuel poverty strategies. The economic returns on
