Biomass, which is essentially trees, grasses, and forestry and agricultural waste, is burned as a source of both heat and electricity all over the world, including in the U.S. where it accounts for up to one percent of the nation's electricity supply. It is also a "feedstock" for ethanol and biodiesel. South Bay, Florida’s New Hope Power Partnership, a 140 megawatt facility that powers some 60,000 homes, generates electricity by burning "bagasse," fiber left over after the processing of sugar cane, such as that shown in this photo.
Image: Rufino Uribe, courtesy Wikipedia
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Dear EarthTalk: There’s a lot of talk today about solar and wind power, but what about biomass? How big a role might this renewable energy source play in our future? Couldn’t everyday people burn their own lawn and leaf clippings to generate power?
-- Deborah Welch, Niagara Falls, NY
The oldest and most prevalent source of renewable energy known to man, biomass is already a mainstay of energy production in the United States and elsewhere. Since such a wide variety of biomass resources is available—from trees and grasses to forestry, agricultural and urban wastes—biomass promises to play a continuing role in providing power and heat for millions of people around the world.
According to the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), biomass is not only a renewable energy source but a carbon neutral one as well, because the energy it contains comes from the sun. When plant matter is burned, it releases the sun’s energy originally captured through photosynthesis. “In this way, biomass functions as a sort of natural battery for storing solar energy,” reports UCS. As long as biomass is produced sustainably—with only as much grown as is used—the “battery” lasts indefinitely.
While biomass is most commonly used, especially in developing countries, as a source of heat so families can stay warm and cook meals, it can also be utilized as a source of electricity. Steam captured from huge biomass processing facilities is used to turn turbines to generate electricity. Of course, biomass is also a “feedstock” for several increasingly popular carbon-neutral fuels, including ethanol and biodiesel.
According to the federal Energy Information Administration, biomass has been the leading U.S. non-hydroelectric renewable energy source for several years running through 2007, accounting for between 0.5 and 0.9 percent of the nation’s total electricity supply. In 2008—although the numbers aren’t all in yet—wind power likely took over first place due to extensive development of wind farms across the country.
According to the USA Biomass Power Producers Alliance, generating power from biomass helps Americans avoid some 11 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions that burning the equivalent amount of fossil fuels would create each year. It also helps avoid annual emissions of some two million tons of methane—which is 20-plus times stronger a “greenhouse” gas than carbon dioxide—per year.
The largest biomass power plant in the country is South Bay, Florida’s New Hope Power Partnership. The 140 megawatt facility generates electricity by burning sugar cane fiber (bagasse) and recycled urban wood, powering some 60,000 homes as well as the company’s own extensive milling and refining operations. Besides preserving precious landfill space by recycling sugar cane and wood waste, the facility’s electricity output obviates the need for about a million barrels of oil per year.
Some homeowners are making their own heat via biomass-fed backyard boiler systems, which burn yard waste and other debris, or sometimes prefabricated pellets, channeling the heat indoors to keep occupants warm. Such systems may save homeowners money, but they also generate a lot of local pollution. So, really, the way to get the most out of biomass is to encourage local utilities to use it—perhaps even from yard waste put out on the curb every week for pick-up—and sell it back to us as electricity.
CONTACTS: UCS, www.ucsusa.org; USA Biomass Power Producers Alliance, www.usabiomass.org.
EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.
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11 Comments
Add CommentCorrect me if I'm wrong but doesn't the net effect of burning bio mass act as carbon sequestration? Sure you release co2 but there is also carbon left over in the form of ash.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo wouldn't this be better then carbon neutral?
I agree, better than carbon neutral. If you use cogeneration to also produce biochar and use the heat produced in its production to fuel power generation then you've not only go electricity, but you've got high carbon material that can be used in compost to DRASTICALLY increase the fertility of the soil without using artificial fertilizer. Both biochar and ash can be used in compost to make more biomass or feed our crops. I think its a great way to generate energy and certainly has more than enough potential to be sustainable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne cool thing about biochar is that it actually causes more carbon to be stored in the soil than would be released by that same biomass decomposing naturally. This means that its even better for carbon sequestering than the natural process of nature. It's some pretty cool stuff.
Dear UCS (Union of Confused Scientist), I would desperately like to know where the energy stored in fossil fuel form we use such as coal, natural gas, and crude oil came from? The Devils Right Hand; The Dark Side of the Moon?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately for wood stove (and backyard boiler) lovers, the emissions from these home heating devices are a major source of our country's poor air quality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe American Lung Association reports that In most areas of the country, wood burning from fireplaces and woodstoves is the largest source of particulate matter air pollution (PM) generated by residential sources. In some localities, fireplaces and woodstoves have been identified as the source of 80% or more of all ambient particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5) during the winter months. Fireplaces and woodstoves, states the ALA, produce orders of magnitude more particulate matter than well-tuned oil or gas devices producing equivalent heat. You can read more about the ALAs concern at http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=23354.
Underscoring the ALA report is a program instituted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) called The Great American Wood Stove Changeout program, a voluntary effort to encourage people to replace or changeout their older, inefficient wood stoves with cleaner burning technologies. Details may be read at the CDC website http://www.umt.edu/cehs/ibshe_presentations/Aldridge.pdf .
Residential wood burning in the U.S., according to the CDC emits 420,000 tons of PM2.5 each year. Of that amount, wood stoves contribute 80% or 336,000 tons of PM2.5 per year. To put it in perspective: changing out one old inefficient stove is equivalent to taking five old diesel buses off the road.
Large scale commerical biomass plants have much more stringent emissions systems with the capacity to be safer than a home wood stove or fireplace!
This reads like a press release from the biomass industry! No mention of clearcutting carbon sequestering forests to feed all the industrial biomass incinerators; no mention of toxic C&D waste being used; no mention of burning toxic trash. I thought this was a scientific publication?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe biomass incineration industry makes much of the so-called 'carbon neutrality' of burning trees, plant material, etc., and the Feds and various State governments have adopted this stance as well. In my view, it is nonsense, for a couple reasons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst, CO2 concentrations have risen from 280 to 380 parts per million in the atmosphere in the past 100 years. Human activity since the start of the Industrial Revolution has produced 500billion +/- metric tons of carbon, which would suggest an atmospheric carbon concentration of up to 500ppm. The only reason we don't have that today is that the oceans and the remaining biomass (the part we're not burning) are absorbing the difference. But atmospheric concentrations continue to rise, because the trees and oceans are already absorbing all they can. (And it's damaging the oceans by increasing acidity levels, but that's a topic for another day.)
Secondly, think about it. The argument goes, 'The tree would have degraded naturally and released its carbon'. True. But over what - 20, 30, 40 years? Now we incinerate that tree in seconds, and hundreds of thousands just like it - and do the remaining trees grow any faster? Suck up carbon any faster? No, they dont. So we've taken half the cycle, accelerated it to (relative) light speed, and claim the other half of the cycle can do the work of cleaning up our mess. Also nonsense, at least in my view.
The last great lie of carbon neutrality is no one/very few ever mention the time period - carbon neutral, over what supposed period of time? My guess? Even if it were true, hundreds of years. A LOT less time than we have to figure out how to deal with global warming.
In the meantime, CO2 from biomass is just like CO2 from coal or oil, it's not 'magic' CO2 that 'doesn't count' against atmospheric carbon levels. Its just another brick on an already unsustainable load.
The Union of Confused Scientist is either delusional or in the tank, take your pick. Burning forests is NOT carbon neutral. Again, burning forests is NOT carbon neutral. Again, burning forests is NOT carbon neutral.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll the claims about waste biomass is a red herring, most of it is burning of living growing forests. There is no way that burning forests for tiny amounts of power at 25% efficiency, thus sending 75% of the forest up in smoke, can be sustainable . By the way, the director of the Massachusetts Sierra Club has figured it out and called biomass the New Coal. If it were a South American country burning their forests we would condemn them. Is forest protection just for poor third world countries?
A tree burns in 30 seconds and takes 50 years or more to re-grow. And then the following year more trees are cut and 50 more years to grow, and you end up in a growth, deforestation and burning cycle in comparison to the growth and carbon sequestration cycle of a growing forest.
The idea that cutting and burning the forest versus letting it continue to grow and absorb CO2 as it is today, is carbon neutral is laughable. You really have to do mental summersaults to believe that one. Since the carbon in trees is locked up until the trees die, the only way that carbon neutrality would work is if you only cut the trees that were dead or nearly dead. Even this method accelerates the release of carbon because burning is faster than the decay timeline.
The most important point is that there is one atmosphere, with carbon inputs and carbon outputs. Burning trees for electric happens to produce carbon inputs into the atmosphere at a rate 50% higher than coal. Forests remove carbon from this one atmosphere, but they dont selectively choose carbon from biomass versus any other carbon, so burning of forests has no more claim to carbon sequestration from trees than does any other polluting source. In fact burning forests is a double whammy, because now the ability of the forests to sequester carbon has been compromised by deforestation.
The fact that the Union of Confused Scientists endorses forest incinerators, a.k.a. tree fueled biomass power plants, in its platform is unconscionable. For years they have been lecturing folks to plant trees, and recycle paper to save trees and now they say, go ahead and burn what equates to billions of trees every year in the Markey/Waxman bill, including National Forests. And all the hoopla about protecting biodiversity, and now they give the green light to radically increaThe Union of Confused Scientist is either delusional or in the tank, take your pick. Burning forests is NOT carbon neutral. Again, burning forests is NOT carbon neutral. Again, burning forests is NOT carbon neutral.
All the claims about waste biomass is a red herring, most of it is burning of living growing forests. There is no way that burning forests for tiny amounts of power at 25% efficiency, thus sending 75% of the forest up in smoke, can be sustainable . By the way, the director of the Massachusetts Sierra Club has figured it out and called biomass the New Coal. If it were a South American country burning their forests we would condemn them. Is forest protection just for poor third world countries?
A tree burns in 30 seconds and takes 50 years or more to re-grow. And then the following year more trees are cut and 50 more years to grow, and you end up in a growth, deforestation and burning cycle in comparison to the growth and carbon sequestration cycle of a growing forest.
The idea that cutting and burning the forest versus letting it continue to grow and absorb CO2 as it is today, is carbon neutral is laughable. You really have to do mental summersaults to believe that one. Since the carbon in trees is locked up until the trees die, the only way that carbon neutrality would work is if you only cut the trees that were dead or nearly dead. Even this method accelerates the release of carbon because burning is faster than the decay timeline.
The most important point is that there is one atmosphere, with carbon inputs and carbon outputs. Burning trees for electric happens to produce carbon inputs into the atmosphere at a rate 50% higher than coal. Forests remove carbon from this one atmosphere, but they dont selectively choose carbon from biomass versus any other carbon, so burning of forests has no more claim to carbon sequestration from trees than does any other polluting source. In fact burning forests is a double whammy, because now the ability of the forests to sequester carbon has been compromised by deforestation.
The fact that the Union of Confused Scientists endorses forest incinerators, a.k.a. tree fueled biomass power plants, in its platform is unconscionable. For years they have been lecturing folks to plant trees, and recycle paper to save trees and now they say, go ahead and burn what equates to billions of trees every year in the Markey/Waxman bill, including National Forests. And all the hoopla about protecting biodiversity, and now they give the green light to radically increased logging which will wipe out that biodiversity. This is truly staggering hypocrisy.
Dont forget to recycle your envelopes to save trees&..so we can burn them!
Sorry, post got garbled. Here is the correct version:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Union of Confused Scientist is either delusional or in the tank, take your pick. Burning forests is NOT carbon neutral. Again, burning forests is NOT carbon neutral. Again, burning forests is NOT carbon neutral.
All the claims about waste biomass is a red herring, most of it is burning of living growing forests. There is no way that burning forests for tiny amounts of power at 25% efficiency, thus sending 75% of the forest up in smoke, can be “sustainable”. By the way, the director of the Massachusetts Sierra Club has figured it out and called biomass the “New Coal.” If it were a South American country burning their forests we would condemn them. Is forest protection just for poor third world countries?
A tree burns in 30 seconds and takes 50 years or more to re-grow. And then the following year more trees are cut and 50 more years to grow, and you end up in a growth, deforestation and burning cycle in comparison to the growth and carbon sequestration cycle of a growing forest.
The idea that cutting and burning the forest versus letting it continue to grow and absorb CO2 as it is today, is “carbon neutral” is laughable. You really have to do mental summersaults to believe that one. Since the carbon in trees is locked up until the trees die, the only way that carbon neutrality would work is if you only cut the trees that were dead or nearly dead. Even this method accelerates the release of carbon because burning is faster than the decay timeline.
The most important point is that there is one atmosphere, with carbon inputs and carbon outputs. Burning trees for electric happens to produce carbon inputs into the atmosphere at a rate 50% higher than coal. Forests remove carbon from this one atmosphere, but they don’t selectively choose carbon from biomass versus any other carbon, so burning of forests has no more claim to carbon sequestration from trees than does any other polluting source. In fact burning forests is a double whammy, because now the ability of the forests to sequester carbon has been compromised by deforestation.
The fact that the Union of Confused Scientists endorses forest incinerators, a.k.a. tree fueled biomass power plants, in its platform is unconscionable. For years they have been lecturing folks to plant trees, and recycle paper to save trees and now they say, go ahead and burn what equates to billions of trees every year in the Markey/Waxman bill, including National Forests. And all the hoopla about protecting biodiversity, and now they give the green light to radically increased logging which will wipe out that biodiversity. This is truly staggering hypocrisy.
Don’t forget to recycle your envelopes to save trees…..so we can burn them!
The notion that biomass is carbon neutral is a myth that is soon to go the way of "the earth is flat" and "the sun revolves around the moon." In any event, it really doesn't matter if it's carbon neutal or not. What does matter is that CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing. All CO2 molecules are equal in the damage they do - it makes no difference where they came from. If we don't get that we need to reduce emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere immediately, there is not much hope for our survival as a species. Maybe we are too stupid to survive, but we have no right to take other species down with us. Let's stop playing games saying this CO2 is bad and that CO2 is ok. It's all bad, and we need to change our ways. Propping up stone-age CO2-emitting biomass incineration is exactly the wrong thing to do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Brazil sugar cane is used to create alcohol to power cars,why can we do the same here?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have a very big problem here in Northern California. Sierra Pacific Industries wants to increase their biomass burner in Anderson. First SPI, with one fellerbuncher and a two person crew, clearcuts 20 acres blocks of the forests, of what sometimes contain some of the biggest remaining old trees in the Southern Cascade Range, they had to get bigger saws at the mills this year. Then they clear the forest of what is not on its way to the mill, send that part to the biomass plants they have up here, spray copious amounts of herbicides and pesticides on the once alive soil, and plant monocrops of the same species genetically engineered trees, or drill a few water wells, and create a subdivision with many homes on it. I would very much like the Union of Concerned Scientists to come out with a statement condemning clearcutting, plantation forestry and deforestation in the USA and around the world. You can find out more about our fight to save California's natural forests and headwaters forests on private and public land at www.StopClearcuttingCalifornia.org and www.TheBattleCreekAlliance.org We have talked to the Board of Forestry, California Department of Forestry, private forest owners and more to no avail. Our fight now has led us to the courts, suing them one rubber-stamped life threatening thp at a time. We must start using electrons and stop burning carbon. Before it is too late, please act now. In Northern California alone, thousands of acres of Forest Biodiversity are being lost every day. I appreciate your position on so many issues, please help us save our planet's biodiversity. Thank you for all you can do.
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