Biomass

Biomass is the king of renewable energy in terms of scale. Recent research by the think tank International Institute for Environment and Development (IIER) showed biomass makes up 10% of the world’s primary energy mix, which includes fossil fuels, renewable energy and nuclear power.

This proportion rises to 77% in terms of renewable energy use alone. Its future growth seems assured; the International Energy Agency predicts biomass use will represent 30% of primary energy use by 2050.
Energy production through biomass follows much the same line as fossil fuels, with only the material being different. The fuel, including wood, crops, food waste and industrial waste, is burned, heating water that turns to steam and drives a turbine.

Traditionally this material is made up of waste products such as wood chippings or crop husks, which means they do not go to landfill or are just burned. For example, the American Biomass Power Association claims this technique diverts about 36.2 million tons of urban wood waste from US landfills annually. The theory then is that these source materials will be quickly replenished and the process can continue in a sustainable way.

Creating energy through biomass doesn’t fit the traditional description of renewables as it is a process that releases carbon dioxide. However, proponents of biomass instead say the energy is ‘carbon neutral’ as the CO2 was absorbed by plants from the atmosphere in the first place and is simply being re-released as part of the ‘carbon cycle’. Replenishing supplies, such as crops and forests, allows this cycle to continue.

They contrast this with fossil fuels, which, when burnt, introduce gases that have been locked away for millions of years, ramping up the total volume of CO2 in the atmosphere. Companies and governments are enthusiastically embracing biomass. In the USA there are 80 biomass facilities in 20 states that supply over half of America’s renewable electricity. The IIER reports that in Austria 80% of new homes come fitted with wood pellet boilers.

In the UK new biomass plants are set to be built in Anglesey and Cumbria, with estimates that future growth will mean demand rising from one million tonnes of fuel a year to 60m.
You might think such enthusiastic embracing of a ‘renewable’ energy source would please campaigners, but biomass brings with it some serious controversy.
On an environmental front, there is heated debate over whether biomass can really claim the moniker of ‘carbon neutral’, not least because in some cases - particularly wood - it can take decades to replace the source material.
Critics say this timescale is far too long to allow nations to meet carbon reduction targets.

Questions are also raised as to whether biomass will provide a secure energy supply for nations in the face of declining fossil fuels.
According to pressure group Biofuelwatch, the UK will need 50m-70m tonnes of biomass a year to run its proposed new power stations.
At the moment the UK only produces between 8m and 10m tonnes of biomass, the groups says, inferring the country will be reliant on imports.
But the biggest concern is how sustainable biomass is. Ideally biomass plants would all be run on waste products. However, there are fears that growing demand will simply render this impossible.

"If demand rises for wood it could push up prices a lot and potentially this could represent a danger even for British woodland," said Kenneth Richter from Friends of the Earth, in his response to plans for the new plant in Anglesey.
This could prompt a “global land rush”, which would hit some of the world’s poorest hardest, according to the IIER.
"If left unchecked, the growing pressure on land access could undermine livelihoods and food security in some of the world's poorest countries," it concluded in its report.

Moves are afoot to try to address this problem. For example, the European Commission expects each member state to draw up a ‘national biomass action plan’ and has recently approved several schemes that will judge the sustainability of biofuel creation.
Whether initiatives like this solve the problem remains to be seen.
It is possible to predict the expansion of biomass with a certainty that cannot be applied to any of its renewable energy rivals.
Unfortunately, it also outstrips other renewables in terms of the potential hazards in exploiting it.