The UK Joins California in Casting a Wary Eye Toward Biomass

In the United States, it’s vehicle fuel; in the United Kingdom, electricity generation. But in both places, officials are casting a wary eye toward using wood, corn, grasses and other plant matter for energy. They fear that growing and transporting the material could actually add to greenhouse gas emissions.

The detractor in the States is the California Air Resources Board, which is unhappy with corn-based ethanol. The pressure against corn ethanol has been growing for some time, and it looks like the CARB is ready to rule out ethanol as a useful tool against climate change. TreeHugger thinks that the CARB’s decision may change national policy, setting back the ethanol industry’s efforts.

The UK’s Environment Agency doesn’t go as far, only suggesting that “mandatory minimum standards” apply to biomass fuels. However, the tone of its report, called “Biomass — Carbon sink or carbon sinner?” could present a roadblock for companies that hopes to cash on in burning biomass like straw in their plants, some of which also burn coal.

Biomass, of course, can be corn, straw or pretty much anything else you might grow. The US prefers to make liquid fuel; the UK is more interested in just burning the stuff. But the arguments against using biomass are pretty much the same in either instance:

• Growing biomass involves either harvesting from previously unused land or from land used for food crops; the former could actually cause emissions, while the latter could raise food prices
• Intensive growing cycles require heavy use of fertilizer, which is inevitably made from fossil fuels
• Transporting the biomass to its destination electricity or fuel plant requires more fossil fuels to be burnt
• Converting the biomass to energy tends to waste much of its energy; turning it to fuel requires yet more energy as an input

Of these arguments against biomass, the latter three are easiest to measure (although by no means simple). The first, the land use issue, is the real sticking point, and no study to date has managed to prove one way or another what the effects are.

Nor is any imminent study likely to. The question of how much CO2 is being released into the air by a change in land use is nearly impossible to pinpoint, leaving scientific efforts open to political nitpicking. So for the present the question is almost entirely a political one, and cues will certainly be taken from the CARB and the UK’s Energy Agency. For now, the tide may be against biomass.