Words, they mean the same thing, and yet not the same thing

In Sili Valley and other thoroughly modernized places, "alternative energy" tends to imply something high-tech, such as photovoltaic cells. It also tends to imply something used to produce electricity, such as a hydroelectric dam. Thus, when biomass is talked of as an energy source, human brains tend to think of the production of ethanol from corn, or the use of used deep fryer oil to power a car.

However, here in Alaska, "energy" tends to mean "heat", and "biomass" tends to mean "trees". Thus, I myself have an alternative energy heat source that uses biomass as a fuel:


Now, don't I sound impressive? I use renewable energy!

What image comes to your mind when you think of the phrase "alternative to fossil fuel"? Is it anything like this?

Source: ftp://ftp.aidea.org/2011AKWoodEnergyConference/4-26-2011_Presentations/1330pm-2_Rush_ResponsibleSourcingWood.pdf

This image comes from the presentation by The Nature Conservancy at the 2011 Alaska Wood Energy Conference.

Alaska is a different sort of place!

I must confess, I had never grasped the utter wastefulness and illogic of electric heat until moving to Alaska and living in a smaller city, where I am encouraged to think about such things.

In big cities, such as San Francisco, where I grew up, people tend to take technology and infrastructure for granted. For example, it had never crossed my mind until I was in college to wonder how gravity-fed flush toilets worked on the 100th floor of skyscrapers. Now, living in a cabin whose water supply is fed from a reservoir to the back of the sink by a very noisy sump pump, I wonder all the time how various buildings' water systems work, and why and how they are so quiet. It's quite lovely, to be given back this sense of wonder, after having lost it at around age twelve.

Anyway, back to electric heat. Here, our power plants generate power by burning stuff. It is my understanding that when we put paper into the "paper recycling bins" around town, they don't get recycled, either. They get burned at the power plant for supplemental heat generation. It's all about burning. So, high-quality, low-entropy fuel (diesel) is burned to make electricity. And electricity is sent to homes. And some homes... run it through high-resistance wires to create the highest-entropy form of power there is: heat. What a mind-bogglingly ridiculous waste! So, with a wood stove, you cut out the middle man. Rather than wait for the trees to die, take 65 million years to turn into a fossil fuel, then burn the fuel to create electricity, to bleed off the electricity to make heat, I cut out all of those middle mofos and burn the trees. That is the beauty of biomass heat! Plus, I just like my wood stove. It's nice and toasty warm and makes the best tortillas and grilled cheese sammiches evar.