Daily Junction.mobi portalEnvironment · July 30, 2023 · Elena Marsh · 6 min
Biomass energy is power and heat made from recently living material such as wood, crops and organic waste. Here is how it works, why it is treated as renewable, and the debate over whether it really counts as low-carbon.
Long before wind turbines and solar panels, people made energy by burning wood. Biomass energy is, in a sense, the oldest fuel of all, brought up to date. It now runs power stations, heats homes and fills fuel tanks, and it counts as one of the main renewable sources. Yet it is also the most argued-over, because unlike the sun or the wind, biomass produces carbon dioxide when it burns. Here is what biomass energy is, how it works, and why its environmental record is more complicated than the renewable label suggests.
Biomass energy is energy released from organic material, recently living matter such as wood, crops, plant residues and organic waste, that is burned or converted into fuel. The material itself is called biomass, and the energy made from it is often known as bioenergy.
The crucial phrase is recently living. Coal, oil and gas are also derived from once-living things, but those formed over millions of years and exist in fixed quantities. Biomass comes from material grown within a human lifetime, which can in principle be replaced by growing more. That is the basis for treating it as renewable, in the same family as solar, wind and geothermal energy.
Biomass is a broad category rather than a single fuel. Common sources include:
Because so much of it is waste or by-products, biomass is sometimes presented as a way of turning rubbish into power, though dedicated crops grown solely for fuel are a different proposition.
The chemical energy stored in biomass, originally captured from sunlight by photosynthesis, can be released in several ways depending on the fuel and the goal.
This versatility is part of biomass's appeal. It can supply heat, electricity and transport fuel, three jobs that other renewables struggle to cover all at once.
Biomass has a particular strength that intermittent renewables lack: it can be stored and used on demand.
Solar panels produce nothing at night and wind turbines fall idle on calm days, so the electricity grid must balance their swings. Biomass fuel, by contrast, can be stockpiled and burned whenever it is needed, making it dispatchable. That allows it to help fill the gaps when the sun and wind are unavailable, supporting a grid that leans on variable sources.
It can also make use of material that would otherwise be wasted, and in rural areas it can provide local heat and power from local resources. The International Energy Agency notes that bioenergy is, in fact, the largest source of renewable energy globally when heat and transport are included alongside electricity, precisely because it is so flexible.
Here is where biomass becomes contentious. Burning biomass releases carbon dioxide, just as burning coal does. So how can it be considered a climate solution?
The argument rests on a cycle. As plants grow, they absorb carbon dioxide from the air. When they are burned, that carbon is released again. If new plants are grown to replace those harvested, they reabsorb a roughly equivalent amount, and over the full cycle the net addition of carbon to the atmosphere can be small. In that ideal case, biomass is described as approximately carbon neutral.
In practice, several things complicate the picture:
For these reasons, environmental groups and some scientists argue that biomass is often counted as cleaner than it really is, while supporters say that strict sustainability standards can keep its emissions genuinely low. The honest position is that biomass can be low-carbon, but only under the right conditions, and not by default.
Biomass plays a notable role in Britain's energy system. The country's largest example is the conversion of former coal-burning units at a major power station to run on wood pellets, much of it imported, which has made biomass a significant share of UK renewable electricity. It also features in domestic heating, through wood-pellet and log boilers, and in transport, through biofuel blended into petrol and diesel.
Government policy, overseen by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, supports biomass as part of the renewable mix but ties subsidies to sustainability criteria intended to ensure the material is responsibly sourced. How strong those rules are, and whether imported wood pellets truly deliver carbon savings, remains a live debate among policymakers, scientists and campaigners.
Biomass energy turns recently living material, wood, crops and organic waste, into heat, electricity and fuel, and counts as renewable because that material can be regrown. Its great advantage is flexibility: unlike wind and solar, it can be stored and burned on demand. Its great weakness is carbon. Burning biomass emits carbon dioxide, and it is only genuinely low-carbon when the plants are sustainably grown, properly replaced and sourced without high transport or land-use costs. Treat biomass not as automatically green, but as a useful tool whose climate value depends entirely on how carefully it is managed.
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