The Biomass Assessment Handbook

Energy for a sustainable environment

Frank Rosillo-Calle, Peter de Groot, Sarah L. Hemstock, Jeremy Woods

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317527466
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Power Resources
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The increasing importance of biomass as a renewable energy source has led to an acute need for reliable and detailed information on its assessment, consumption and supply. Responding to this need, and overcoming the lack of standardised measurement and accounting procedures, this best-selling handbook provides the reader with the skills to understand the biomass resource base, the tools to assess the resource, and explores the pros and cons of exploitation.

This new edition has been fully updated and revised with new chapters on sustainability methodologies. Topics covered include assessment methods for woody and herbaceous biomass, biomass supply and consumption, land use change, remote sensing techniques, food security, sustainability and certification as well as vital policy issues. The book includes international case studies on techniques from measuring tree volume to transporting biomass, which help to illustrate step-by-step methods. Technical appendices offer a glossary of terms, energy units and other valuable resource data.

1
Overview of bioenergy

Frank Rosillo-Calle and Jeremy Woods

Introduction

Bioenergy is not an energy source in transition, as it is often portrayed, but a resource that is becoming increasingly important as a modern energy carrier. Many readers will consider biomass for energy as a key component of our future energy needs but not all agree as to the extent of this role. With a very large potential role of biomass for energy also come increasing concerns about potential impacts, both positive and negative, e.g. land use, food production, biodiversity, environment, climate change, sustainable development, etc. The widespread use of biomass for energy needs to be assessed within its wider societal context, examining all the pros and cons; in this researchers have a special responsibility to look for the bigger picture, and to see biomass for energy as part of the problem and also as part of the energy solution.

Since the first edition of this handbook the energy sector has become even more dynamic and unpredictable, so this chapter differs significantly from that of the first edition. Take, for example, the emergence of shale gas, which has transformed the energy scene in the USA, with huge implications for global energy markets. Although this handbook focuses on the methodologies for assessing biomass for energy, bioenergy needs to be contextualized within the over-arching drivers for global energy provision, and so major changes have been made to the handbook since the previous edition.

Hence this chapter provides an overview of bioenergy, the world’s largest source of renewable energy (RE), not a set of statistics. It examines the role of biomass energy scenarios and the potential of biomass (examining traditional versus modern applications and linkages between the two), it details the difficulties in compiling information and classifying biomass energy, it looks at the barriers to the use of biomass energy and finally it examines the possible future role of bioenergy.

Historical role of bioenergy

Throughout human history biomass in all its forms has been the most important source of our basic needs, often summarized as the six ‘Fs’: food, feed, fuel, feedstock, fibre and fertilizer. Biomass products are also frequently a source of a seventh ‘F’: finance. Until the early 19th century biomass was the main source of energy for industrial and non-industrial countries alike, and, indeed, still continues to provide the bulk of energy for many developing countries. Increasingly, particularly in industrial countries, it is becoming a driving force in modern and industrial applications, raising resource-use efficiencies (reducing waste for example) and increasing resilience of energy provision.

Past civilizations are the best witness to the role of bioenergy. Forests have had a decisive influence on world civilizations, which flourished as long as towns and cities were provisioned by forests and food-producing areas. Wood was the foundation on which past societies were built. Without this resource, civilization failed: forests were for them what oil is for us today (Rosillo-Calle and Hall, 1992; Hall et al., 1994). For example, the Romans used enormous quantities of wood for building, heating and all sorts of industries. The Romans commissioned ships to bring wood from as far away as France, North Africa and Spain. The need for wood as the material for architecture and shipbuilding, and the fuel for metallurgy, cooking, cremation and heating, left Crete, Cyprus, Mycenaean Greece and many areas around Rome bereft of much of their forests (Perlin and Jordan, 1983). When forests were exhausted, these civilizations began to decline.

The first steps towards industrialization were also based on biomass resources. Take charcoal, for example, used in iron smelting for thousands of years. Archaeologists have suggested that charcoal-based iron making was responsible for large-scale deforestation near Lake Victoria, Central Africa, about 2,500 years ago. In modern times, Addis Ababa is a good example of dependency on woodfuel. Ethiopia did not have a modern capital until the establishment of modern eucalyptus plantations, which early in the 20th century allowed the government to remain in Addis Ababa on a continuous basis. Before a sustainable source of biomass was secured the government was forced to move from region to region as the resources became exhausted (Hall and Overend, 1987).

In fact, some historians have argued that North America and Europe would not have developed without abundant wood supplies, since the Industrial Revolution was initially only possible due to availability of biomass resources. Britain is an excellent example which, thanks largely to its forests, was able to become one of the world’s most powerful countries. Initially, forests, mainly of oak, covered two-thirds of Britain. The wood and charcoal produced from these forests was the basis for the Industrial Revolution, and continued to fuel industrial development in Britain until well into the 19th century (Schubert, 1957).

Worldwide, biomass fuels are used for cooking, heating and lighting in households and many institutions and cottage industries, ranging from brick and tile making, metalworking, bakeries, food processing and weaving to restaurants, and so forth. More recently, many new plants are being set up to provide energy from biomass directly through combustion to generate electricity or heat, or as combined heat and power (CHP) facilities. Contrary to the general view, biomass utilization worldwide remains steady or is growing for three broad reasons:

• population growth,
• increasing demand for energy,
• increasing environmental concerns.

The current role of bioenergy

Today, biomass continues to be the main source of energy in many developing nations, particularly in its traditional forms, currently providing nearly 70 EJ of primary energy globally. On average biomass provides 35% of the energy needs of three-quarters of the world’s population, rising to between 60 and 80% or more in the poorest developing countries. However, modern biomass energy applications are increasing rapidly in both industrial and developing countries, so that they now account for 30–35% of total biomass energy use. For example, the USA obtains about 4% and Finland and Sweden 25% of their primary energy from biomass. Table 1.1 provides an overview of biomass for energy supply.

Table 1.1 Bioenergy supply, feedstocks and associated land demand estimates for 2010 (Woods et al., 2014)

	Global production (EJ)	Feedstock	Land occupied (million ha)
Global primary energy	520	Predominantly fossil	Not quantified
Total bioenergy	62	All forms, traditional and modern	≈50
Traditional bioenergy	40	Mostly from residues, wastes and harvesting parts of live trees (pollarding)	Not quantified
Modern bioenergy	21.5		≈50
Biofuels	4.2	Agricultural crops	<13
Heating (domestic and industrial)	13	2/3 residues and wastes, 1/3 energy crops (lignocellulosic)	≈30
Electricity	4.1	50% from energy crops, 50% from residues and wastes	≈10

Notes: derived from authors’ own calculations based on IEA (2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2012a, 2012b) data. Biofuels (aggregate of national production data for 2010) from F.O. Lichts Interactive Data (2013; http://statistics.fo-licht.com/). Traditional bioenergy data derived from IEA (2011b) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC’s) Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) (Source: Chum et al., 2011).

Biomass is a fuel that will continue to be the prime source of energy for many people for the foreseeable future. For example, an International Energy Agency (IEA) (2002) study, still valid today, concluded:

Over 2.6 billion people in developing countries will continue to rely on biomass for cooking and heating in 2030 ( . . . ) this is an increase of more than 240 million from current use. In 2030 biomass use will still represent over half of residential energy consumption. . . .

Because of the almost universal multi-purpose dependence on biomass, it is important to understand the interrelations between these many uses, and to determine the possibilities for more efficient production in future. The success of any new form of biomass energy will depend upon the availability of large-scale sustainable feedstocks and advanced processing and conversion technologies. Indeed, if bioenergy is to have a long-term future, it must be able to provide what people want: affordable, clean and efficient energy forms such as electricity, heat and liquid and gaseous fuels. This also entails direct competition with other energy sources but may also increase the resilience of supply and dampen price volatility in energy markets.

Biomass potential/scenarios

Biomass features strongly in virtually all the major global energy supply scenarios, as biomass resources are potentially the world’s largest and most sustainable energy source. Biomass is in theory an infinitely renewable resource which in total comprises 220 billion oven dry tonnes (odt), or about 4,500 EJ, of annual primary production. While highly controversial, as a result of competing uses for biomass and long-term impacts on biological carbon stocks (Hall and Rao, 1999) estimated the gross theoretical annual bioenergy potential to be about 2,900 EJ (approx. 1,700 EJ from forests, 850 EJ from grasslands and 350 EJ from agricultural areas).

Bioenergy featured strongly in the latest assessments of the IPCC, with its Working Group III’s 5th Assessment (AR5) report (IPCC, 2014) concluding:

Bioenergy deployment offers significant potential for climate change mitigation, but also carries considerable risks (medium evidence, medium agreement). The IPCC’s Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) suggested potential bioenergy deployment levels to be between 100–300 EJ. This assessment agrees on a technical bioenergy potential of around 100 EJ (medium evidence, high agreement), and possibly 300 EJ and higher (limited evidence, low agreement). Integrated models project between 15–245 EJ/year deployments in 2050, excluding traditional bioenergy.

There are large variations in the many attempts to quantify the practical potential for bioenergy (see for example Slade et al., 2014 for a meta-analysis of the major global assessments of bioenergy potentials). This is due to the complex nature of biomass production and use, including such factors as the difficulties in estimating resource availability due to variability in climate, management and markets, long-term sustainable productivity and the economics of production and use. In addition, there is a large range of potential bioenergy feedstocks and crops, and conversion technologies, as well as ecological, social, cultural and environmental factors that need to be considered. Estimating biomass energy use is also problematic due to the range of biomass energy end uses and supply chains and the competing uses of biomass resources.

Further uncertainty exists about estimates of the potential role of dedicated energy forestry/crops and the traditional sources of biomass they could replace (as residues from agriculture, forestry and other sources including for example food wastes) and which have much lower and variable moisture and energy contents. Furthermore, the availability of energy sources, including biomass, varies greatly according to the level of socio-economic development. All these factors make it very difficult to extrapolate bioenergy potentials, in particular at a global scale, which is further complicated by lack of long-term data, as explained in Figure 1.1.

As stated, virtually all global energy scenarios include bioenergy as a major energy carrier in the future, as illustrated in Figure 1.1. These figures are relatively simple gross estimates of future global energy needs and the determination of the related primary energ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures, tables and boxes
• Abbreviations
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Editors’ note and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Overview of bioenergy
• 2 General introduction to the basis of biomass assessment methodology
• 3 Assessment methods for woody biomass supply
• 4 Non-woody biomass and secondary fuels
• 5 The assessment of biomass consumption
• 6 Assessing sustainability for biomass energy production and use
• 7 Land use assessment for sustainable biomass
• 8 Remote sensing for mapping, monitoring vegetation dynamics and providing biomass production estimates
• 9 Case studies
• 10 General technical appendices
• Index