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Low-Carbon

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate change experts have concluded that carbon dioxide emissions from biomass are part of the natural carbon cycle. Because no more carbon is released than was absorbed during the lifetime of the biomass, and because this cycle is relatively short, biofuels such as wood residues and agricultural fiber are considered carbon neutral.

When fossil-fuels are burned to produce energy there is a net increase in carbon released to the atmosphere because it takes carbon that was safely stored underground and adds it to the atmosphere. That kind of carbon is called fossil carbon.

Biomass energy, however, deals with biogenic carbon – carbon that is already part of the atmospheric system. Biogenic carbon is part of a cycle in which carbon moves between oceans, terrestrial sources and the atmosphere. There’s no additional carbon released to the atmosphere because the carbon in question is already part of the global-carbon cycle, which includes the carbon in the atmosphere.

It’s not entirely unlike the difference between good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. You want to increase your good cholesterol and lower your bad cholesterol. Biogenic carbon is okay, but you want to lower the amount of fossil carbon being released into the air.

Furthermore, consider what happens to forest fuels not used in power plants; they decay or go up in smoke. Wildfire releases millions of tons of greenhouse gases in North America annually, including methane, which is 25 times nastier than carbon dioxide in the world of greenhouse gases. When wood decays, half its emissions take the form of methane. When woody biomass is used to produce energy, methane is oxidized in high-efficiency boilers; essentially none is emitted.

Biomass energy reduces the need to burn fossil-fuels for electricity, and the less fossil-fuel we burn the more we lower our carbon footprint.