Environmental and Climate Change Benefits of Biomass Energy

Biomass power facilities have numerous attributes which are beneficial to the environment, including climate change benefits.

Environmental Benefits

Biomass energy facilities provide a range of environmental benefits from cleaner air to better forestry management. The air emissions from carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) from biomass plants are significantly lower compared to traditional fossil fuel plants, such as coal plants which are displaced by biomass plants. SO2 and NOx emissions are the major contributors to smog and acid rain. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that electricity generated from coal produces about 50 times more SO2 emissions than biomass fuels and significantly more NOx emissions. Biomass plants also produce far less particulate matter (PM) than would result from the alternative method of open burning the wood wastes.

Beyond providing cleaner air, biomass energy plants:

• Encourage better forestry practices which in turn leads to the increased protection of critical wildlife habitats
• Produce ash which can be used for soil enhancement in farmland
• Reduce the impact of invasive species
• Reduce wildfire risk
• Improve communities' solid waste management by providing an outlet for land-clearing debris, diseased/infected trees and other wood wastes rather than open burning the material or depositing them in already crowded landfills
• Reduces the impact of natural disasters by providing an outlet for storm debris

Climate Change Benefits

As opposed to energy derived from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas, biomass energy does not contribute to climate change. The carbon which is stored in biomass material as it grows is already part of the atmosphere. Biomass energy does not add new carbon to the active carbon cycle unlike fossil fuels which remove carbon from geologic storage. The carbon emissions emitted from biomass facilities would have been released back into the atmosphere through some other fate or mechanism such as natural decay or an alternative disposal method such as open-burning. The advanced emissions controls on a biomass energy facility significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere along with other emissions such as particulate matter.

In addition to not emitting new carbon into the active carbon cycle, biomass energy has additional climate change benefits. As with all renewable energy technologies, biomass energy displaces the production of an equivalent amount of energy from fossil fuels. However, biomass energy has specific traits which make biomass energy not just carbon neutral but actually carbon negative. Biomass energy changes the timing and relative mix of carbon forms emitted into the atmosphere associated with the disposal or natural disposition of the biomass material. Specifically, the carbon emitted from biomass energy is primarily in the form of carbon dioxide. In the absence of biomass energy, a large portion of the biomass energy would be left to decompose naturally, be open-burned or landfilled. Landfilled or naturally decaying biomass material releases carbon in the form of methane as well as carbon dioxide. Methane is between 20 and 25 times more potent as a greenhouse-gas than carbon dioxide. Finally, as mentioned above, biomass energy contributes to forest health and fire resiliency which increases the amount of carbon stored on a sustainable basis.