Pollutionwatch: wood burning is not climate friendly

With snow on the ground, many people will have been huddling around a wood fire, but researchers are questioning if wood burning is really climate neutral. Burning wood is not CO₂ free; it releases carbon, stored over the previous decades, in one quick burst. For an equal amount of heat or electricity, it releases more CO₂ than burning gas, oil and even coal, so straight away we have more CO₂ in the air from burning wood. This should be reabsorbed as trees regrow. For logs from mature Canadian woodland, it could take more than 100 years before the atmospheric CO₂ is less than the alternative scenario of burning a fossil fuel and leaving the trees in the forest.

This matters to prevent climate tipping points such as an ice-free Arctic or shifting monsoon patterns before the wider decarbonisation can take place following the trajectories of the Paris and Kyoto agreements. Critics of this view say that the trees would never have been left to grow, but would instead have been chopped down for wood or paper. It seems that wood burning is not climate neutral in the short term and requires an increase in forested area to be climate neutral in the longer term.