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Biomass Fuel 'could fill 15% of electricity needs'
Renewable
biomass fuel from agriculture and forest products could provide 15 per
cent of the electricity industrialised countries will demand by 2020. It
could also be enough to supply 100m homes and significantly cut carbon
dioxide emissions, according to a report published yesterday. |
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By Frances
Williams in Geneva The report by WWF, the
conservation group, and the European Biomass Industry Association (AEBIOM)
says the 15 per cent target, which compares with 1 per cent today, would
require less than 2 per cent of the land area of OECD countries and
would not compete with food production or nature conservation. Used instead of using coal to
generate electricity, biomass could replace about 400 traditional large
power stations and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main
"greenhouse" gas contributing to global warming, by about 1,000m tonnes
a year, the report claims. This is equivalent to the
combined annual emissions of Canada and Italy. "Decision-makers have
overlooked the potential of biomass to deliver sustainable energy for
the future", said Giulio Volpi of WWF's climate change programme. "The
big advantage that biomass offers over other renewable energy sources
such as wind and solar is that it can be stored and used when needed." The report says use of
biomass fuel will be essential to meet renewable energy targets under
the Kyoto protocol on climate change. The 15 per cent target would
require exploitation of a quarter of the potential collectable
agricultural, forestry and livestock residues in OECD countries and the
dedication of 5 per cent of their crop, forest and woodland area to the
growing of wood biomass for energy. Biomass production could create up
to 400,000 jobs by 2020, the report says.
www.panda.org/epo FURTHER INFORMATION What is Biomass? Biomass is organic material
which has stored sunlight in the form of chemical energy. Biomass fuels
include wood, wood waste, straw, manure, sugar cane, and many other
byproducts from a variety of agricultural processes. When burned, the chemical
energy is released as heat. If you have a fireplace, the wood you burn
in it is a biomass fuel. What we now call biomass was the chief source
of heating homes and other buildings for thousands of years. In fact,
biomass continues to be a major source of energy in much of the
developing world. Sugar cane, a good example of
a biomass crop, is grown in many Southern states and in the Caribbean.
The chief commercial product, sugar, is extracted from the cane by
removing the juice; the remainder of the plant, called "bagasse", still
contains the chemical energy of the sun. As with any biomass, bagasse
produces heat when burned. Ethanol, another
biomass fuel, is an alcohol distilled mostly from corn. For the last
twenty-five years, it has been blended with gasoline for use in cars in
the USA. Using ethanol in gasoline means we don't burn quite as much
fossil fuel in our cars. Researchers are trying to
develop ways to burn more biomass and less coal and other fossil fuels.
When burned, biomass does release carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. But
when biomass crops are grown, an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide is
consumed through photosynthesis. Numerous biomass electric
power plants, as well as steam producing plants for industrial purposes
(especially in the wood and paper products industry) are located
throughout the country. The real environmental
benefit of biomass will come when we can use large amounts of biomass to
generate electricity, thereby reducing consumption of fossil fuels.
This is a photograph of biomass fuel, probably wood chips, being stored
and dried for later use in a boiler.
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