Push for lawmakers to consider biomass

As Australia hunts for solutions to its energy problems, biomass has not featured highly in the conversation so far. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is hoping to change that. 

It wants political leaders to actively consider biomass, such as wood waste, as an option to bolster Australia's baseload energy supply. Environmentalists warn that poses a risk to native forests.

Listen to the discussion on ABC News - “Push for lawmakers to consider biomass.”

Schlesinger questions the value of biomass

by William H. Schlesinger

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William H. Schlesinger.

urning biomass to generate electricity is officially listed as being 'carbon neutral'.

But claims that it helps prevent climate change are not as straight-forward as they seem.

Read what William Schlesinger has to say - “Why renewable 'biomass' is not as good for the climate as we'd hoped”.

Renewable energy quietly steals the lead in South Africa

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olar, biomass and wind energy systems are popping up all over the country and feeding clean energy into the strained electrical grid, according to the Guardian.

“The howling wind drives the turbines, their blades bent back from the force as they spin in the evening light and send electricity to local villages in South Africa’s Eastern Cape.

“High up on the top of the turbine, local resident Lungela Vongu, dressed in a safety harness and hard hat leans far out over the 100 meter drop to check that the wind speed detector is working properly. “This wind farm is bringing a lot more jobs into this community for the people, without it there is no future here,” he says.

“The Cookhouse wind farm is the biggest wind system built in Africa, with 66 turbines generating 138MW of clean power. It started feeding the grid at the end of 2014 and it is far from unique,” The Guardian reports.

Read the Guardian story - “How renewable energy in South Africa is quietly stealing a march on coal”.

Trees are our saviour, but they are dying

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uch faith in mitigating climate change is put in trees.

The amazing Amazon Forest.

However, the very thing trees help avoid is their undoing.

A warming atmosphere is causing a die-off among trees, particularly among those in the amazing Amazon carbon sink.

A story in The Conversation - “Amazon carbon sink is in decline as trees die off faster” – reports that the Amazon forest covers an area 25 times that of the UK, and spans large parts of nine countries.

“The region contains a fifth of all species on earth, including more than 15,000 types of tree. Its 300 billion trees store 20% of all the carbon in the Earth’s biomass, and each year they actively cycle 18 billion tonnes of carbon, twice as much as is emitted by all the fossil fuels burnt in the world,” it reports.

Professor of Tropical Ecology at University of Leeds, Oliver Phillips, and NERC Research Fellow at University of Leeds, Roel Brienen, has explained the difficulties facing this huge forest, and by implication, the earth.

ARENA tackles the root cause with biomass

The flagrant and irresponsible use of fossil-fuels as an energy source is root cause of climate change.

But now, as author Richard Heinberg said nearly a decade ago, “The Party’s Over”, and subsequently there has since been significant interest in finding another energy source.

Many ideas have been explore and just today the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) announced $2 million funding support to develop a solution for collecting renewable biomass from fast growing trees.

The announcement comes in a story headed: “Renewable biomass from fast growing trees”.