Grilling with gas or charcoal: What’s better for the environment?
Green Stuff: Eco-news and discoveries
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor/ June 11, 2009 edition
NEWSCOM
Lava rock or charcoal briquette? It's just one of many grillers' debates.
Having a backyard barbecue and wondering whether to use charcoal or propane? A new study in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review compares the two and finds that propane, a fossil fuel, is better for the environment than charcoal, a biofuel. Propane, the author says, has a carbon footprint just above one-third of charcoal’s.
It’s a question of efficiency in the manufacturing process (how much fuel it takes to make the fuel). Charcoal is made by slow-burning wood in a kiln. Only 20 to 35 percent of the wood that goes into creating charcoal actually becomes charcoal. The rest goes up the chimney. Propane, on the other hand, has a much greater yield. More than 90 percent of the fuel used in making propane becomes liquid gas.
Then there’s the question of efficiency at the user’s end – your grill. Gas-burning stoves turn on and off quickly, so users can easily control how much is burned and how much CO2 gets released. By comparison, charcoal-burning stoves aren’t as easily stopped or started. And they also require fire lighters, an additional fuel with its own CO2 footprint.
Also in eco-news and discoveries:
Wildlife migrating farther north
Increasing temperatures in recent decades, especially rising low temperatures, are pushing wildlife northward in the northern Great Lakes region, a new study finds. And at the same time, as colder-loving species move north, more southerly species are moving in.
Writing in the June issue of Global Change Biology, scientists say that of nine mammal species studied, five – woodland deer mice, woodland jumping mice, least chipmunks, northern flying squirrels, and southern red-backed voles – have declined in parts of Michigan.
Four southerly species – white-footed mice, southern flying squirrels, eastern chipmunks, and common opossums – have extended their range – and not by just a few miles. The mice and flying squirrels, for example, have moved 140 miles north compared with where they were in 1980.
What the shifting critters may mean in the long term is up for debate.
But the authors point out that these small but plentiful mammals play large roles in their ecosystems. They disperse seed and fungus (some fungi are important for tree- root health). They also control insect populations that might otherwise decimate trees. And they serve as prey for a host of birds, other mammals, and snakes.
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Comments
2. James Corbin | 06.11.09
Charcoal tastes better and quite frankly, short of those tree-huggers who think the world is going to end tomorrow, who really cares? China is putting online a coal-fired electric generating plant on average of one a week and I’m going to worry about what I use for my grill? Such is the nonsense we are constantly bombarded with. Whatever happened to freedom and liberty? The environmentalists want to make sure that these are the only endangered species.
3. Robert Hisey | 06.12.09
If you look at the life cycle, charcoal has almost a zero carbon footprint, as a new tree will grow where the old was cut, absorbing exactly as much carbon as was emitted.
It is a “renewable resource”. A “Biofuel” as it were, not a fossil fuel.
4. TXatheist | 06.12.09
A new tree cannot absorb co2 at the rate of an old one. Changing your lifestyle can be done in little steps. The world isn’t going to end tomorrow but it will be getting warmer globally if we don’t change. Use solar and wind to provide energy to buildings.
5. Joe Real | 06.12.09
I agree that if we use pure charcoal, it is by and large carbon neutral if the process is made the natural way. All fossil fuels are not, and that includes propane.
I have seen a documentary that today’s mass production of Charcoal briquettes could end up worse than propane. One is that they mix COAL with the wood charcoal when they mix charcoal briquettes to improve its energy density or how well and how long the briquettes will burn. The other is that the manufacturing process also burns off a lot of fossil fuels in the ovens and drying kilns as they make the reformulated “charcoal” briquettes.
A natural way of making charcoal was first done by the Amazonians more than 5,000 years ago and is still the same technology that we can apply today. That methodology and the resulting charcoal is the one that is truly carbon neutral.
6. Sara Donna | 06.12.09
“having a barbecue and wondering whether to use charcoal or propane?” Never once have I wondered-I know what tastes best!Come Independence Day,you won’t find me cookin with gas.I may even carry my hamburgers and hotdogs home in a plastic bag. Why? because it’s America and we still have a choice!
7. J Powell | 06.13.09
Of course, the question is obscured by a certain ambiguity in what we call ‘charcoal’. Charcoal briquettes, like the one featured in the picture, are often pasted together with petroleum products. This is then supplemented, as often as not, with a healthy dose of lighter fluid. As much as I agree with the general statement ‘charcoal tastes better’, that cannot be applied to charcoal when it’s soaked in what smell like fuel-injector cleaner.
Such petroleum use also skews the question of what is better for the environment, as one ends up using chemicals that burn far less cleanly than propane.
The alternative? Natural chunk charcoal and a chimney starter. This is naturally made à la the above comment. It’s wood, just wood. It’s renewable, it burns hotter and cleaner, and it tastes fantastic.
8. Daniel Pedersen | 06.14.09
To all of those who bemoan the “loss” of liberty, freedom and the right to make choices:
No-one is forbidding you from using charcoal, propane, grass clippings or diesel fuel.
But - you must remember that your freely-made choices have consequences, and you can’t make those go away.
The key is to make informed, _responsible_ choices - which is where articles like this come in.
10. MJP | 06.14.09
To expand on Daniel Pedersen’s comments: no one is forbidding your use of charcoal, but you should be aware that your choices have consequences–not only for yourself but for others. Good citizenship and common courtesy dictate that we consider the effects on those around us before we take any action.
11. Camillo | 06.20.09
I have heard both sides of the story and my conclusion is that Al Gore is wrong. I am using charcoal this weekend while China starts work on another coal plant. At the same time cosmic planetary physics will dictate our climate’s fluctuations as it has since the beginning of time. For me, at least, this matter is ajourned.
12. Grill Master | 08.26.09
There are companies that use much more efficient processes than the kiln to convert wood to char. Propane is made from 100% non-renewable fossil fuels whereas charcoal is made primarily from renewable waste wood so it has a smaller carbon footprint.
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1. James R. Lewis | 06.11.09
Perhps if we walked to where we needed to go; consumed uncooked food; gave up our computers and other lifestyle convneience items we could go through life without harming the environment. Close hospitals, municipal buildings, dispense with services, and oh yes, padlock Congress.
You do not have to publish my comment. I am sick and tired of all the silliness. My grass remains unmowed as all the healthy people are running or riding for one cause or another neglecting the neighborhood as they race by. I do appreciate email and the Monitor. Blessings.