Renewable Energy in The United States - Biomass

Biomass

Biomass is biological material derived from living, or recently living organisms, such as plants and trees and utilizes wastes or plant matter specifically grown to generate electricity or produce heat. The main advantage of using grown fuels, as opposed to fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and oil, is that while they are growing they absorb the near-equivalent in carbon dioxide (an important greenhouse gas) to that which is later released in their burning. Although there is some debate over the net carbon neutrality and near term affects of using the biomass for energy a key difference is the relatively short carbon recycle period of grown biomass (several years or decades) as opposed to the millions of years it took to turn carbon into fossil fuels. With proper conservation and growing techniques biomass can be an important renewable energy source.

Biomass can be utilized for all three major energy needs: electricity, heating/cooling and transportation fuels. However, each usage is distinctly different from the others, especially regarding efficiency - the percentage of energy utilized from the biomass source. Whereas pellets for heating can be up to 90% efficient, bio-electricity plants are comparable to coal power plants, with around 30% efficiency, and biofuels from crops or algae even less.