Trees: Green Gold
Comstock Fuels
Breakthrough cellulosic fuel technology and patented cellulosic feedstock processing solutions.
Green Gold: A History
It's fascinating how the modern world’s understanding and respect for nature's "Green Gold", Earth's #trees, has evolved over time. That answer has always existed within the heart of a tree’s symbiotic relationship with the #environment and life on Earth, but it also started in the history of America's industrial past.
Every leaf on every tree performs the miraculous process of #photosynthesis, turning sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into oxygen and glucose. This mechanism not only provides us with the air we breathe but it also actively fights climate change by absorbing #CO2, a potent greenhouse gas. Trees truly are the "lungs of the Earth". (More from Comstock Fuels about forests and carbon).?
We’ve come a long way since the days of felling trees to build the modern world. #Technology and a commitment to science and innovation has ushered in a new era of "#GreenGold", one that honors nature, optimizes the carbon system in balance with nature, and delivers ever greater benefits and efficiencies for people and modern systems that move us about.
At Comstock Fuels, we believe that value for people, planet, or?profit should always be a balanced equation between nature and our industrial systems, #decarbonizing #mobility being the chief system our team focuses on every day.??
Looking back, history tells the story about how vital trees were to enabling the first wave of #industrialization. During the Comstock gold rush days in Nevada, for instance, trees were the bedrock of building the physical infrastructures of mining and the communities, fueling enterprise, safety, and survival. ?
Forests were harvested extensively to construct mining frameworks, build towns, provide energy to homes, and fuel machinery. Lumbering was "...often called “green gold,” as a means to supply lumber (for) the Nevada mines, especially the Comstock (Virginia City and Gold Hill) (for) fuel and building needs and for the construction and fueling of the Central Pacific Railroad and other railroad lines". (Chun, Sue Fong, “The Chinese and Green Gold: Lumbering in the Sierras”, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, June 2003)??
Some of this history hangs in the halls of the caretaker cottage at the Virginia City cemetery. (The historical cottage for the "caretakers cottage" was donated by Comstock Mining and moved to the cemetery site where it has since been restored). ?
“The Comstock bonanza and peak lumber usage coincided with the new age of steam. From the largest of trees used for mining timbers to the town’s homes and businesses, plank walkways and furnishings, waste wood was burned.?
From 1859 to 1889 there were 3,000,000 cords of firewood burned for heating and cooking on the Comstock. A full-size pickup truck with stake sides could barely hold a cord of firewood. Imagine a line of 3,000,000 pickup trucks lined up on the highway heading for Virginia City! That many pickups, lined up bumper to bumper would reach from Virginia City to the Atlantic Ocean, back to Virginia City and back to the Atlantic Ocean again”.?- (Excerpt Silver Terrace Cemetery)?
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Green Gold: The New Legacy
With #greenhousegas (#GHG) emissions from #transportation accounting for about 29 percent of total U.S. GHGs as the largest contributor of U.S. GHG emissions (EPA),?Comstock Fuels’ patented #cellulosicfuel process is an evolutionary breakthrough.
Using commercially available equipment to pulp and separate unused waste wood from existing industrial systems and supply chains, Comstock's patented cellulosic fuel process efficiently converts one tonne of wood into two refined #biointermediates that double the output yields for fuel producers, and which are free of the inhibitors and contaminants that have hindered prior commercial efforts. There are 500 million tonnes of unused and underused #waste #woodybiomass in the U.S. available annually.
This value-unlocking breakthrough can also incentivize the rapid planting of new short rotation tree (#SRCs) and shrub crops that grow fast, afforest marginal lands, and leave root systems in the #soil to store more carbon.?There are more than 100 million acres of marginal lands in North America that could be restored.
Comstock's commercially-available technology today can be licensed for deployment into the existing transportation fuels infrastructure to unlock the emerging circular bioeconomy, while ushering in the new age of below zero carbon transportation fuels.
This is a new legacy for "Green Gold", by unlocking?the power of trees to accelerate the rate of decarbonizing mobility and restoring the balance of carbon to our forests for a climate-smart, modern world.??
To learn more about Comstock Fuels, connect with us at www.comstockfuels.com.?
To learn more about the history of the Comstock historical mining district, visit the Comstock Foundation at https://comstockfoundation.org/.
Comstock Fuels is a wholly owned subsidiary of?Comstock Inc.?
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