Its simple. The wood such as construction waste, old pallets, building demolition, branches thinnings of commercial forests tree tops, etc will decompose anyway, much of it to gases. Also removing some smaller less healthy trees to help the larger more productive ones grow is Forestry 101 even for Sustainable Foresters. Doghair forests are not the priority. Coal buried deep underground and ossified by pressure and heat over eons will not and this carbon needs to be stored.
On the other hand there simply is not enough wood and its density is not sufficient to replace coal. The hauling costs of wood versus coal are high.
In some cases burning wood makes sense, it many cases it does not.
This does not even consider a future climate 4 to 6 degrees C warmer. Much of current forests will not survive this in their current for anyway.

I am constrained to say that this is a luddite approach to CC and renewable energy. The lack of logic is self-evident.

I think the fear of large scale exploitation of forests for energy production is motivated. But I can not agree that all usage of wood for energy purposes is unsustainable and detrimental. As I think that a limited proportion of forest biomass (mainly branch-remnants from fellings and wood from forests invading former agriculture land) could be used in a sustainable system, I can not support these demands. I am sorry.

/Lars Andersson, forest friend in the Nordic taiga

Leave the forests alone.

I totally agree with the band on electricity only powerstations however Biomass/waste has got to be an option to supply heat energy for buildings and industry.Biomass Combined Heat and Power at high efficiency such as we are building here at the University of East Anglia in Norwich England at 80% efficiency using local sustainable wood supplies has to be part of the future

I worked for over 30 years in northwest Connecticut and southwest Massachusetts as a forester for a water supply company. My agency also is involved in trash to energy incineration. I am now retired, living in the West, so I have no financial incentive in wood to energy in the northeast. I have not personally done research on the emissions of wood burning plants. However, I know that the trash to energy plant, with the appropriate scrubbers, etc, can clean the emissions remarkably. I can't imagine that the wood to energy plants couldn't also, knowing what is burned in the trash to energy plant. Before those wood burning plants are permitted they would need to go through intense local, state, siting council permitting procedures which would address emimssion issues, for sure. I also know that there are hundreds of thousands of acres of timberland in New England that are crying for thinning. Done right, the general health of the Northeastern forests can definitely be improved with the removal of the type of material that would be removed for wood to energy. With the modern equipment, feller/bunchers, forwarders,etc, the job can be effectively done with great advantage to an overcrowded, overstocked forest. As the product value of sawtimber is so much higher, I have some confidence that normally the lower quality, lower value product will be removed for the lower value wood to energy market, leaving the better trees to grow providing all the amenities that the northeast forests can so adequately provide, such as recreation, wasteshed protection, wildlife habitat, oxygen and of course, sawtimber to fulfill societies needs and reduce our demand for tropical woods.

This is a tricky one I think. Biomass IS a low carbon way to generate electricity, or also as biodiesel to power cars etc. However the problem is the huge demands we have, which will lead to taking much more wood than can be produced sustainably. We need to drastically cut our population and our energy use. Is it only 8 years now till tipping point? How can we do this in that timescale?

Here in Tasmania, Australia there is a proposal to burn old growth forests for electricity. again trying to say it is green. luckily our federal govt is yet to classify these sort of plants as green power. Agree this is a very real threat to the world's forests as energy demand increases.

@DaveMoore: did I see again reference to "future climate 4 to 6 degrees C warmer." The IPCC did not predict that global temperature would be 4-6 degrees C warmer. The post SRES scenarios had a wide range of assumptions to look at the functional relationships within the systems and IAS assessment models. Various external study groups' models were used for various drill down studies which were unfortunately dumbed down in summary charts showing all of the results. The results were something like: A1 scenario temperature increase 1.8 degrees, A1T 2.4 degrees, B2 scenario 2.4 degrees, A1F1 scenario 4 degrees plus some others. These are with no mitigation strategies. Somehow this got dumbed down to be a prediction of future global warming of 4-6 degrees. SRES committee told IPCC that the scenario studies should not be used to make conclusions about the future or be compared amongst each other; but, only to provide insight on the functional behavior of the systems and models being used. This has been ignored and misused. I am not clear on the ramifications of CO2 emissions for burning biomas to energy. If there is credit gained from clearing dead forests it may be a net positive.

Please note that 6.77 billion people live on Earth now. An additional 2.4 billion members of the family of humanity are expected to be added to the human community between now and 2050.

No one denies humankind's requirements for increasing amounts of energy to supply the rapidly growing needs of the human population worldwide. As we develop alternative sources of energy like wind power, would it not make good and common sense to consider ways promoting humane and voluntary programs for limiting the skyrocketing increase of absolute global human population numbers. After all, in the brief 150 year period between 1900 and 2050, the total human population could grow by approximately 8 billion people. Such unbridled population growth is patently unsustainable on a finite planet with the size and composition of Earth, is it not?

Until we acknowledge and address the primary, human-driven cause of humanity's need for colossal supplies of energy, we cannot realistically expect to meet our long-term demand for energy by simply choosing to develop alternative, finite sources of energy to our rapidly dissipating fossil fuel resources.

I can't belive with solar and wind we do this I am really mad about this! Burning trees for energy in this day and age? Thank you for this info I had no idea.