There are tenders out in BC for the use of all the beetle killed pine to be used as fuel to generate electricity. if the methane etc. is being released anyway I guess it's better to be using it this way thatn burning other fuels to accomplish the same generation.
The trouble I foresee is that down the road when existing kill has been used up, the beetles are back to normal, knock on wood, and all that investment in wood fired generation is sitting there, there will be a hue and cry for more hewing of new forest to meet the demand. The other angle of this is that fertilizer in the forest has generally come from decomposing trees. If we take those out of and burn them, our next generation of trees take that much longer to get established.
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