BIOMASS HUB

In a follow up to a position paper released by the World Bioenergy Association, experts are asked the question: ‘could bioenergy power the world?”  The potential is there, but obstacles remain.

Andrew Lee, Chief Editor at RenewableEnergyWorld.com, asks a lineup of key industry players: “could bioenergy power the world?”

The question was posed in connection to a position paper from the World Bioenergy Association that claims bioenergy, and in particular biomass, has the potential to meet global energy demand by 2050 if best practices and technologies are adopted worldwide and sufficient land is made available for production.

The organization estimated that the potential for bioenergy production is 1135 – 1,548 EJ (ExaJoule) in 2050, based on different scientific studies. The global energy consumption is 490 EJ today, and could reach well over 1000 EJ in 2050, according to IEA projections.  According to the report, the largest potential for bioenergy comes from biomass production on surplus agricultural lands and degraded lands.  The current use of biomass for energy is only 50 EJ, around 10 percent of global energy consumption. Bioenergy crops are grown on 25 million hectares, which is only 0.19 percent of the world’s total land area and 0.5 percent of the total agricultural land.

Among its conclusions, the paper found that in the past decade, the number of countries exploiting biomass opportunities for the provision of energy has increased rapidly. The global use of biomass for energy increases continuously and has doubled in the last 40 years.

So…can it?  While the potential is there, significant obstacles remain.

Lee focuses his examination on which obstacles must be overcome to achieve this goal and asks a panel of industry experts to weigh in.

Among the obstacles cited by industry experts:

• Absence of a viable global supply chain
• Current co-firing and gasification technologies
• Administrative barriers
• Policy constraints — specifically, the co-firing cap, the level of support for co-firing regular (that is, non-energy crop) biomass, and for dedicated biomass plant the lack of grandfathering rights
• Poverty, lack of infrastructure for developing biomass (and also provision of food and wategreer), and the situation concerning rights to land use in the developing world
• Water availability

As discussed in the World Bioenergy Association’s position paper, exacerbating these issues is a lack of public understanding about the promise of bioenergy:

[T]he information about the enormous potential of bioenergy is, unfortunately, not part of the public consciousness. As attitudes often shape public behavior, it is very important to spread information widely and let people know of bioenergy’s large potential. Supplying the public with important information about bioenergy can equip them to put pressure on politicians to create a framework for increasing the speed with which bioenergy solutions are implemented.

But even if these obstacles are overcome, experts warned at a recent bioenergy conference that bioenergy — despite its enormous potential — should not be viewed as a silver bullet.  A portfolio of options must be explored to meet increasing worldwide demand.

More on getting to a biomass-powered world by 2050.

More information from the World Bioenergy Association.

Image: Flickr/Michael Karrer