- Forest biomass is often burned in ‘slash’ piles, producing CO2 and waste heat. The same material could produce electricity or liquid fuels.
In this morning’s Seattle Times, an article was written about the use of forest biomass to create renewable energy. The article missed two very important components of the issue of carbon neutrality. Those have to do with time and scale.
A decade or millions of years
The Carbon dioxide cycle from forest biomass takes place in a span of a decade. The article ignores the cycle involved in releasing carbon today by burning fossil fuels that have been safely stored in the earth’s crust for millions of years.
The article refers to a study commissioned by the Massachusetts’ Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences to report that using biomass for energy is “more polluting …than coal”. This claim, widely circulated in the media when the study was first published, has been repudiated by Manomet as a misinterpretation of their findings in June of 2010.
A single tree or a global system
DNR presented the legislature with a report that articulates the diversity of scientific studies regarding carbon neutrality and the variety of landscape scales they use to approach the issue.
The study referenced in the article focuses on carbon being replaced on that exact spot and the number of years it will take for the replanted trees to grow back. This ignores what the atmosphere can’t ignore – that millions of other trees across the broad landscape are simultaneously growing and pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. Carbon neutrality is not a feature of a single tree, but of large regions or even nations.
| Follow DNR on: |  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
