Dedicating crops and / or land to
generating bioenergy makes it harder to feed the planet in a sustainable way.
But although some forms of bioenergy can play a helpful role, dedicating land specifically for
generating bioenergy is unwise.
Furthermore, when natural forests are felled to
generate bioenergy or to replace the farm fields that were diverted to growing biofuels, greenhouse gas emissions go up.
Not exact matches
«In the U.S. alone, from current activities in agriculture and forestry, 1.5 billion tons of cellulosic material are
generated every year and none of that goes into liquid transportation,» noted microbiologist Tim Donohue, director of the Great Lakes
Bioenergy Research Center, during a tour of the center in Madison, Wisc., this past October.
«Although
generating methane from wastes is one of the oldest
bioenergy strategies and is practiced even in small villages in developing countries, its application on a large scale has been limited because it is slow.»
Working with governments, academia and industry across sectors such as forestry, fisheries, agriculture, environment,
bioenergy, mining and human health, the goal of the organization is to
generate social and economic benefits for British Columbia and Canada.
The main option on the table is burning plant matter to
generate electricity (
bioenergy) and pumping the resulting CO2 underground (carbon capture and storage, or CCS).
Unlike other models, GCAM includes carbon stored in forests, causing forest acreage to increase even as energy systems change to include fuels
generated from
bioenergy crops and crop waste.
With Washington's large utilities required to
generate 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020 and federal mandates requiring 30 percent of gasoline to come from alternative fuels, demand for
bioenergy solutions will continue to climb.
Less than 10 % of Bunge's sales and income were
generated by the Sugar and
Bioenergy segment.
This critical eye towards biomass lifecycle carbon account is important for ensuring carbon removal techniques such as
bioenergy with CCS actually
generate net negative carbon emissions in the future.
The qualitative result that growth in
bioenergy raises atmospheric CO2 does not depend on the parameters: as long as
bioenergy generates an initial carbon debt, increasing harvests mean more is «borrowed» every year than is paid back.
Because land and the plants growing on it are already
generating these benefits, diverting land — even degraded, under - utilised areas — to
bioenergy means sacrificing much - needed food, timber, and carbon storage.
To provide
bioenergy except at the cost of food, timber, or carbon storage, people must
generate additional biomass, which means biomass that is not already growing or being used.
This is important context for the thorny question of whether, and how, carbon emissions from burning
bioenergy — renewable energy made available from materials derived from biological sources (a category that includes both biofuels like ethanol and biomass like wood used to
generate electricity)-- should be included in prospective carbon taxes.
On most of the world's land, PV systems today can
generate more than 100 times the useable energy per hectare than
bioenergy is likely to produce in the future even using optimistic assumptions.
Take, for instance, large - scale
bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), a geoengineering technology that
generates power by growing significant amounts of biomass, burning it, and then storing the carbon underground.
Moreover, it reaches this goal without making (as many climate modelers do) desperate assumptions about horrifically large - scale deployment of
bioenergy - based carbon capture and storage systems (the acronym is BECCS) that
generate fantastic amounts of «negative emissions.»
The primary instrument of negative emissions is expected to be BECCS:
bioenergy (burning plants to
generate electricity) with carbon capture and sequestration.
Some
bioenergy systems, including ones that involve converting land into agricultural biomass and energy crops, can
generate more greenhouse gas emissions than they save.
Carrying on with the «math» problems evident in the ministry, it is time to examine the 46 % listed as renewables wherein «Figure 16» states «Renewables will grow to 46 % of Ontario's
generating capability by 2025» and will consist of: 15 % Wind, 2 %
Bioenergy, 8 % Solar, 5 % Demand Response and 6 % Planned Flexibility.
Second, a great article was published in Nature Climate Change on the potential for
bioenergy with carbon capture and storage («bio-CCS») to
generate net - negative electricity for the Western US.
The potential for CCS to
generate negative emissions when coupled with
bioenergy is integral to energy use becoming CO2 emissions ‐ neutral in 2060.
The implication: in addition to rapid reductions in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use, we'll likely need big industrial CCS processes to
generate negative emissions via approaches like sustainable
bioenergy coupled with CCS and / or direct air capture (DAC) + sequestration to make our climate goals a reality.
The Oxford Martin School put on a three - day Greenhouse Gas Removal Conference with support from the Virgin Earth Challenge, the Savory Institute hosted a big summit on holistic grassland management, and the NGO Belllona hosted a
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Conference (
Bioenergy + CCS is a key strategy for
generating negative emissions energy).