Is wood better than coal for carbon emissions? ... and even though their combustion releases carbon emissions, those would be sucked out of the atmosphere by replanted trees. This soaring production is driven by growing demand in the U.K. and Europe, which are using wood pellets to replace coal for electricity generation and heating. See the important qualifier in my article. Atikokan's analysis found that burning wood pellets would have a 90 percent greenhouse gas emissions benefits over the lignite coal it previously consumed, most of which came from western Canada. It also creates some carbon dioxide emissions during combustion, but they are at lower levels with less additional pollutants than coal. Wood pellets cause more climate pollution than coal when they’re burned. Wood fired power plants have efficiencies of about 25%, ultra super-critical coal plants have efficiencies of about 43%, i.e., coal has much lower CO2/ kWh than wood. On the one hand, burning wood for electricity generation produces between 10% and 35% more carbon emissions per unit of power than coal. Please, also read my other wood burning articles for additional information regarding that myth. This is because wood is both less efficient at the point of combustion and has larger processing and supply chain emissions than coal. Wood can be a bit more variable in heat production. Different woods burn at different temperatures and the same type of tree will react differently as a heat source depending on how well it has been cured. The European Union’s 2020 climate and energy program classifies wood pellets as a carbon-neutral form of renewable energy, and European companies have invested billions to convert coal plants to plants that can burn wood pellets. Carbon emissions don't just come from burning As Emma Grey Ellis at Wired reports, forest carbon is not just stored in their wood—a large amount is stored in the soil. Heat vs. electricity: The life-cycle carbon emissions from generating electricity at a utility-scale biomass facility are about three times greater per MWh than emissions from a similar-sized natural gas electric power plant and 50 percent greater than a coal-fired electricity plant, according to …