A review of alternative energy approaches will show the significant advantages of biomass, and a key characteristic is that combustion does not add to carbon cycle in the unsustainable way that fossil fuels do. As the levels of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, continue to rise, the need to address the sources is urgent the world is to avoid irreversible climate change.

Biomass is a renewable source of organic energy coming from a wide variety of materials including alcohol fuels, tree roots, branches, wood shavings and chips as well as from agricultural waste such as livestock manure, silage and crop residues. The fuel for biomass reactors can either be specially grown, such as miscanthus, switch grass, hemp or poplar and willow trees, or as a by-product such as wood pellets.

One of the obvious advantages of biomass is reducing the need to burn fossil fuels to produce heat, steam and electricity in industrial, residential and farming settings. Biomass is also useful in that it has a relatively high availability with the option for continuous replanting and so by definition is renewable, when the carbon released by burning is drawn back during plant photosynthesis, hence the carbon neutrality of this energy source.

When biomass is taken from agricultural wastes such as straw and husks it is effectively a by-product and so it increases the value of the original agricultural crop. The subsequent replanting acts as a carbon sink for the carbon dioxide released during combustion, while at the same time releasing oxygen into the atmosphere.

With the ever present pressure on landfill sites to take municipal waste streams, the idea of getting biomass from these sites will ultimately see a cut in waste volumes accumulating in these locations, which are the cause of significant releases of methane, a greenhouse gas with over twenty times the potency of carbon dioxide.

An alternative to combustion of biomass is their use in a way that has a lesser impact on the environment. The process called anaerobic digestion, where municipal and animal wastes are converted into gases, is another way of driving turbines to generate electricity. This is an alternative to burning the biomass with the need to plant enough fast growing trees as a carbon sink to make the process carbon neutral.

Increased combustion efficiency can be achieved in transport vehicles by employing ethanol derived from biomass in a variety of new biofuel mixes, with the added benefit of being cleaner burning than the traditional longer chain carbon fossil fuels. Evidently biomass fuels have uses in producing heat and electricity as well as an alternative transport fuel to petroleum derivatives.

It seems governments across the world see the growth of new renewable energy plants as one way to address the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. A key consideration, however, is the need for a sufficient and steady level of baseload supply, as it is not enough to just provide extra capacity to meet peak demands. Sometimes the wind doesn’t blow and the sun does not always shine, and the tides have to turn, all are periods when no electricity can be produced, while the advantages of biomass sources is that they do not have this constraint.

The author, David Phillips, lives on the beautiful island of Anglesey off North Wales, UK and runs a helpful online resource covering local news and information. When looking at the exciting future potential of biomass Anglesey has a very interesting story to tell.

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“If we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction — if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and the national security costs and the true economic costs — we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future.”

That is what President Obama said in his speech at Carnegie Mellon University on Wednesday. He stressed the need to fully embrace a clean energy future because “without a major change in our energy policy, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month — including countries in dangerous and unstable regions. In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”

However, the Renewable Fuels Association notes that environmental activists continue seeking to undermine the growth of biofuels as a way to displace fossil fuels by using unproven theories like Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) and Global Rebound Effect.

RFA points to a new paper published this week in Environmental Research Letters by the originator of the ILUC theory, environmental attorney Tim Searchinger, that suggests the climatic effects of using biomass for energy are no different than using fossil fuels. “By using Searchinger’s logic, a beverage can made from recycled aluminum is the same as a can made from aluminum that was just mined from the ground,” said RFA president Bob Dinneen. “That simply doesn’t make sense, nor does it do anything to break America’s addition to oil.”

According to RFA, the latest scientific evidence clearly shows ethanol production is both environmentally responsible as well as increasingly sustainable, and they are calling on California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) to keep its promise to use the “best available science” in reevaluating its Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS). RFA has written the board twice, urging the immediate adoption of new research from Purdue University that shows ARB overestimated corn ethanol’s potential land use effects by a factor of two. In a letter sent last week to the board, Dinneen expressed concern that ARB is “shirking its commitment to use the best available science and is taking the new Purdue results too lightly.” Adopting new scientific data from Purdue University would reduce corn ethanol’s potential indirect land use change (ILUC) penalty by 50 percent.

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