Environment, Europe, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT: Europe Could Find More Power in Wood

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, May 27 2004 (IPS) - It could be time for Europe to go back to burning wood for energy. Go forward to it, rather.

A new report produced by the environmental agency WWF suggests that biomass – fuel derived from agriculture and forest waste û could supply up to 15 percent of the electricity needs in the 30 industrialised countries of the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) by 2020.

Use of biomass, which would comprise mostly waste wood from trees and branches, select agricultural crops and some oils, could also cut carbon dioxide emissions, says the WWF report published Thursday.

Britain already generates 0.9 percent of its electricity, about 650 MW from biomass, the WWF report says. That is enough to supply 750,000 homes.

A move to generate more may not need dramatic changes. "You can take waste forest wood and cut it into chips for use in power stations," Andrea Kaszewski from WWF told IPS. "You would just use a different fuel in existing power plants. A lot of trials are under way to co-fire this biomass with coal."

Some countries such as Finland have considerable experience in also co- firing biomass with fossil fuels and waste, the report says. The biomass is used to produce electricity at power stations designed to use coal. Britain is among several European countries that have such power stations with excess capacity where biomass could be used.

Use of biomass enough to meet the 2020 target could bring a cut in carbon dioxide emissions from 538 million tonnes to 1,739 million tonnes a year, the WWF report says.

"This is because the biomass burnt would only be releasing into the air carbon dioxide it has already taken up," Kaszewski said. Coal on the other hand would release new carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The shift to the new source will need clear policy decisions, Kaszewski said. "So far there has been a lot of talk but governments have not put substantial money behind it."

The shift would be cost-effective, she said. "The power plants are there, the fields are there, farmers would just need an incentive to grow a different kind of crop." The two preferred crops for use as biomass are Miscamthus and the Short Rotation Coppice.

Governments need now to show industry demonstration projects that work, Kaszewski said. People are likely to be receptive to the new technology. "As long as they can get electricity at the flick of a switch, it does not matter to them where it comes from."

The report says that production of electricity through biomass could create up to 400,000 jobs worldwide by 2020, particularly in rural areas.

"Decision-makers have overlooked the huge potential of biomass to deliver sustainable energy for the future, and it is a viable option for (British Prime Minister) Tony Blair’s government to meet its commitment to source 10 percent of the UK’s total electricity from renewables by 2010," Dr Cararina Cardoso, head of WWF-UK’s climate change programme said in a statement.

"The big advantage that biomass offers over other renewable energy sources such as wind and solar is that it can be stored and used when needed. Hence it can provide a constant, non-fluctuating supply of electricity."

The report prepared by Imperial College and E4Tech, a consultancy firm with expertise in energy and the environment, says the 2020 target can be met by exploiting a quarter of the potential collectable agricultural, forestry and livestock residues in the OECD countries and the dedication of 5 percent of their crop, forest and woodland area to the growing of wood biomass for energy.

The OECD countries have between them more than 1,500 million hectares of crop, forest and woodland, of which some 460 million hectares are cropland. Achieving he target would require an average of 1.25 million hectares of cropland per year to be converted to energy plantations. This represents two percent of the total land area in industrialised countries.

"Bioelectricity has a major role to play in an environmentally sustainable energy future," the report says. But it warns against any one- size-fits-all policy since biomass is produced under different site- specific strategies.

"There are, therefore, likely to be risks associated with bioelectricity production that need to be evaluated on a case-by-case and fuel chain basis," the report says. "Appropriate regulation needs to be designed to ensure the sustainability of biomass energy systems."