Doesn’t the carbon footprint of the woodchip as well as Tees REP’s construction and operation outweigh the savings in CO2 emissions?
A2.We have carefully analysed the full life cycle CO2 impact of all aspects of the project, including, most importantly, emissions from the cultivation, processing and transport of wood chip. Even when shipping biomass over considerably large distances, the savings in polluting greenhouse gas emissions versus fossil fuel based electricity are still extremely high – 90% versus natural gas or 95% versus coal. Fossil fuels themselves must also be mined, processed and transported, causing additional emissions to their direct emissions, while biomass is fundamentally carbon neutral in nature since re-growth replaces harvest creating a closed loop of carbon. We have estimated that our plant will save over 52m tonnes of CO2 during its lifetime.
