Biomass

Overview

Biomass is organic material that can be converted into biofuel or used t generate electricity. The material used in biomass ranges from plants and trees to organic waste from factories or municipal dumps. Biomass is known as a renewable fuel because it is made from resources that naturally replenish themselves. Biomass still does emit carbon into the atmosphere. However, its net emissions have less of an impact than fossil fuel because the carbon content of biomass is naturally released through its carbon cycle. . Fossil fuels are more destructive to the balance of carbon in the atmosphere they have a longer carbon cycle.

In 2005, studies from the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, a leader in the field of biomass research, concluded that approximately 10% percent of global energy consumption used comes from biomass, “making biomass by far the most important renewable energy source used to date” . Although it might not be a permanent solution to climate change, biomass could become a viable and effective way to combat global warming in the next few years, mainly because it is a technology that has already been developed. Certain obstacles, however, do need to be addressed.

Technology

The process of converting plant and crop biomass into biofuel essentially mimics the natural process of carbon cycles. When plants are alive, they consume carbon through photosynthesis, and when they die they release the carbon back into the atmosphere. This delicate balance is a symbiotic relationship – plants and trees need carbon to survive and the Earth’s ecosystem needs to maintain a certain level of carbon in order to function. Yet when humans process huge amounts of fossil fuels, such as coal or oil, it upsets the balance by releasing carbon into the atmosphere that would have otherwise been stored. Therefore, if we use biomass from fuel, which naturally releases carbon into the atmosphere anyway because of its short carbon cycle, overall carbon in the atmosphere can be reduced.

Similarly, by taking advantage of waste biomass and the inevitable carbon emissions that waste creates, methane based biofuel can be created. This biofuel does not add any more carbon to the atmosphere than the waste would emit already. That is because public and industrial waste can contain dangerous toxins and release similar amounts of methane when left on its own.

More specifically, the biomass process consists of collection of the organic material, the conversion of that matter to liquid known as feedstock, and the subsequent conversion of feedstock into biofuel. There are many technologies to convert feedstock into biofuels; they are usually categorized into three categories based on how they break down the feedstock. Thermochemical strategies use heat to break down the feedstock, biochemical strategies use enzymes and bacteria, while chemical strategies use chemical reactions. Specific processes are usually chosen according to the matter the feedstock is comprised of. For a more detailed summary of biomass techniques, see here: File:BiomassTechniques.pdf .

Environmental Implications

It is difficult to assess the environmental impact of biomass on a regional or national level because of the unique complexity of each individual biomass facility. Every unit draws resources from different systems, whether they be natural, agricultural, or industrial. As a result, the overall carbon output depends on how efficiently those ecosystems are used and taken care of. For instance, the carbon footprint of a biomass plant that uses forestry as feedstock can only be determined by how efficiently the facility reforests the area it takes from. . Given this, what can be said with confidence about the environmental effectiveness of biofuel? First, there is more consensus about the need for biofuel in the transportation sector, mainly because other renewable energies lack the technological efficiency needed to power transport. Biofuel does allow for a lower net carbon stock in the atmosphere and can be implemented on a wider scale fairly easily.

Biomass can play an important role in two related fields: sequestration of CO2 and renewable hydrogen power. Sequestration is the capture of carbon that occurs after fuel has been created so that it doesn’t enter the atmosphere. If done in conjuction with biomass, sequestration could potentially solve one of its major obstacles – biomass could then be both renewable and close to carbon neutral. In fact, the combination of biomass and sequestration has the ability produce overall negative carbon emissions. If hydrogen, a potentially useful renewable energy , is used as the feedstock sequestration from biomass can become a truly powerful force in solving this crisis. Renewable hydrogen power can be extracted through the biomass process. Since carbon is easily seperated from hydrogen, creating hydrogen biofuel using sequestration strategies can truly find an environmentally effective way to utilize biomass.

Socio-cultural and Geographic Implications

As mentioned above, the effectiveness of biomass largely depends on its geographical placement. Since biofuel on its own does produce carbon emissions, there needs to be a balance of agricultural protection and protection against deforestation. For example, Middlebury College, in Middlebury, Vermont, is constructing a biomass plant with the surrounding ecosystem in mind. Simultaneously, the college has decided to focus on “sustainable forestry methods,”, to combat the carbon emissions that the facility will produce. If planned with the nearby ecosystems in mind, biomass plants can even have a positive impact on biodiversity through initiatives such as reforestation.

There are many comprehensive plans for biomass based on specific regions. These plans can range from communal to continental in scale. They work to ensure that the crops and plants harvested by farmers, which will likely be specifically for biomass, are guaranteed to be sold or subsidized. Farmers would also need detailed instruction on how to most efficiently farm for their region, since biomass is such new territory. Generally, farmers would participate as long as they are given the opportunity to succeed. In the European Union, for example, farmers seem to be quite willing to participate, but the most successful geographic scale to work on seems to be by country. This kind of approach has happened particularly well in Austria , where a concept called “systematic management” has been made the implementation of biomass for heating homes a success. Systematic management is a complex system that takes into account social structures of an area in order to figure out the best way to introduce new technology. Austria has used this system to introduce more than 600 biomass plants in the last 20 years. Although comprehensive approaches such as this are difficult to achieve, Austria has shown that it is by no means impossible.

Yet opportunity for farmers is not the only social factor in the implementation of biofuel. There also needs to be a balance between food production and crops for biomass. An example of an unbalanced surge in biomass crop was the food crisis in 2007. Across the globe, farmers were taken advantage of the new and expanding biomass market, selling crops like corn and sugarcane usually put on the food market to the renewable energy sector. Because there was little regulation, and even in some cases subsidies for selling biomass-intended crops, food prices shot up. The price rise affected people and countries everywhere, but it most devastatingly affected the poor in developed countries (CITATION, ethanol source). Despite this crisis, biomass does not have to affect people in developing countries this negatively. In fact, since more conventional forms of cooking and heating used in those countries, such as firewood, are part of the spectrum of biomass, these countries might be well prepared to make the transition to larger scale biomass plants.