Shropshire is fast becoming a logging capital of the shires, with thousands of households and businesses switching from oil to wood to heat their properties.
And with much of its countryside covered in woodland, the Shropshire Hills area of outstanding natural beauty could eventually become self-sufficient in energy.
The points were made at a wood energy showcase event at the Long Mynd Hotel, Church Stretton, held by the Shrewsbury-based Marches Energy Agency (MEA).
More than 50 people from across the region learnt about biomass heating installations which can use everything from logs and wood chips to “energy crops”, straw and animal slurry.
Delegates heard that many people in Shropshire, fed up with paying spiralling prices for heating oil, are switching to wood fuel.
Joe Bentley, MEA spokesman, said the event followed a visit to Shropshire earlier in the year when more than 30 international guests looked at renewable energy installations in the county.
“Since then, research carried out as part of the project has indicated that the Shropshire Hills area could be self-sufficient in energy from forestry and agricultural wastes,” he said.
The Long Mynd Hotel itself has made the switch from heating with gas and oil to wood chip, making it the perfect venue for such an event.
Moor Park School, near Ludlow recently went green when it installed an environmentally-friendly boiler during the summer.
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11 Comments
Great.
1. wood is the ideal source of energy.
Obtained directly from “recent” sunlight *** by photosynthesis which took Co2 from the atmsophere, and converted it into Carbon (the wood), and oxygen which was released into the atmosphere.
In recombining the “carbon” ( ie wood) during combustion, the “recently” released oxygen is used to complete the energy cycle.
And
As long as there is sunlight, that cycle can go on repeating for a very long time!
2. Great to get away from being subservient to greedy, large monolithic energy companies charging you what they like, when they like, and forcing you onto disgracefully operated direct debit schemes to make sure that they are always in credit.
Much better to use logs, and buy on a pay as you go basis.
Buy shares in woodburning stove manufacturers?
*** as opposed to using “fossile” fuels which were created by the same “sunlight” process millions of years ago during the carboniferous era.
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The “ultimate” of this solution of course is the whole of our green spaces given over to soulless regimented lines of fast growing “renewable” conifer trees. Like we already see in some of our Foestry Commission areas. No thanks.
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Excellent initiative…. we need to move away from the reliance on energy companies who do not seem so keen on alternative energy production initiatives that are clean and not reliant on them for support, I wonder why, do you think it has something to do with control and money…I wonder?
We must not forget the free energy initiatives either such as electro magnetic devices (The bedini motor) and the Zero Point energy systems, which have been developed, but alas has been suppressed from development to the public at large.
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Derek said:
“We must not forget the free energy initiatives either such as electro magnetic devices (The bedini motor) and the Zero Point energy systems, which have been developed, but alas has been suppressed from development to the public at large.”
…and don’t forget perpetual motion, cars that run on water and the everlasting lightbulb!!
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Dear Derek: John Bedini and his wonderful “free energy” machines is a hoax. All us engineer find it mildly amusing and hilarious when people actually believe it – did they never go to school?
Mr Bedini is on the record saying “There is NO free electricity produced in these systems, or any other system that I know of.”
Bedini claimed to have made a perpetual motion machine and has registered several patents – that doesn’t mean they work! This Holy Grail of science goes back to da Vinci.
First law of thermodynamics
“Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.”
Bedini has said publicly that instead of selling his generator patent to the highest bidder, he has placed it in the public domain, and plans to make it universally available at a nominal cost.
No one is “suppressing” this wonder technology – IT JUST DOESN’T WORK!!
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….. so eventually we will be held hostage by landowners producing wood based fuel instead of oil producing countries.
Sorry about the cynicism, but take off the rose-tinted glasses and grab a dose of reality. There will always somebody making money while there is limited supply and growing demand.
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Lucy W,
It does work I am afraid to say…and you need to do some ‘open minded’ research yourself instead of reading journals! …I was also referring to the Zero Point energy also..heard of that have we, because that technology is being surpressed as well?
On the contrary my dear lady IT DOES WORK…do the research and take your head out of the journals…
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Smellie: Not me. I have already planted this years saplings for my sustainable wood supply for heating and cooking.
Why not buy your own woodland?
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Derek: I didn’t read the bit about Zero Point Energy, probably because I was crying with laughter reading about Bedini. Never heard of Zero Point but cant take it seriously when its in the same sentence of Bedini.
But Ok Derek, do your own research instaed of reading stuff prepetuating the hoax, get a copy of US Patent 6392370 – Device and method of a back EMF permanent electromagnetic motor generator and make one and save the world.
Meanwhile I will stick with the laws of physics since no-one has ever made Bedini’s perpetual motion machine.
Its not suppressed at all, Bendini has made it public domain and the Patent is freely available for anyone to make one for research and investigation.
Come on, pull yourself together, don’t you wonder why his revalation was in the mid-80s but we have yet to see “one he made earlier.”
Does he run his house by this system? No, he’s wired up to the grid. He drives a gasoline automobile as well. I wonder why? hmmmm? Tricky one?
Perhaps I can leave you with he words of a man who re-shaped the world in the last century, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” Adolf Hitler
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Smellie,
The difference here is two fold:
1. Oil and other “fossile” fuels, when burnt, recombine “todays” oxygen with very much “yesterdays carbon – that is: the carbon extracted by photosynthesis from the carbon dioxide laden atmosphere during the caboniferous era. Burning these fuels therefore is a “one way trip” back to that era, i.e “adding excess” Co2 back into the system.
Because wood is produced in a much much shorter time span, i.e. years, not millions of years, then the “burning” of wood or “biomass” is in effect “burning sunlight”, and is therefore a virtuos cycle of events, that is:
Plant Seed, sunlight, growth, sunlight, photsynthesis, carbon and oxygen production, carbon and oxygen recombination (heat produced by burning) and: seed .new plant growth etc …. etc to as good as infinity…..well more than just a few of our life times anyhow
2. Plants, i.e logs are produced HERE, not 1000’s miles away in a foreign country where the whole system of production and supply is anything but under our control.
And
IF logs are produced HERE, and profits are Made HERE, then that profit will circulate within the “local” economy”, and not benefit far flung lands and multinational companies.
There needs to be a fundamental change in the attitudes and ways that our energy system works.
We cannot move forward with the present system. Rose tinted glasses don’t need to be taken off, we are already seeing things for real, without aided vision tending toward the longer wavelength of the visible spectrum (red roses!)
regards askeric dot com, or AKA inferior red!
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The other thing Ask didn’t point out is we are already burning recyclable wood in such environmental abominations as the Donnington Mammouth Bonfire.
I heat and cook in my home on 100% waste wood that is usually fly-tipped. Many other people are seeing how easy it is and adopting my methods.
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