What Are The Disadvantages of Biomass Energy?

Biomass is one of the renewable energy options that is getting a lot of attention these days. Let's take a different tact with it. What are the disadvantages of biomass energy?

Let's start with the basics. Biomass refers to material derived from living materials. This would include meat, but is really meant to focus on plant based materials such as wood, sugar cane, grasses, corn and the like. Biomass energy is the use of these materials to derive energy in one form or another. In some countries, like the United States, biomass is primarily used to produce electricity while in other countries, like Brazil, it is primarily used to produce ethanol to power vehicles. Biomass is touted as a clean, renewable energy source. In truth, this is a very dubious claim. To understand why, let's take a look at the disadvantages of biomass energy.

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The first issue with biomass is the very availability of it as a resource. Biomass works in a country like Brazil because it already has huge sugar cane fields that can produce the massive amount of biomass needed. The same is not true in most other countries. The corn lobby induced the Bush Administration to push corn as a biomass energy in the United States. Corn is a poor biomass choice, and its use sent corn prices spiraling up which caused pressure on food prices and supplies. Put another way, one benefit was gained while another was lost.

The second disadvantage of biomass energy is it is not a clean energy at all in most case. To derive energy from it, most biomass has to be burned. The problem with this is biomass is a natural carbon dioxide sink. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. When we say biomass acts as a sink, this means it soaks up carbon dioxide out of the air. When the biomass is then burned to produce energy, it releases that carbon dioxide back into the air.

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The third disadvantage of biomass energy is it is not particularly dense. Fossil fuels are much maligned these days. Why do we still use them? Well, they are incredibly energy dense. One barrel of oil produces a massive amount of energy while nearly half a barrel of oil is need to produce the same energy from most biomass substances. In short, you use almost as much energy to produce the energy, which certainly defeats the purpose!

As you can see, there are a host of disadvantages to biomass energy. That being said, it still has a lot of potential. This is due to the fact that a massive amount of research is being done in an effort to come up with biomass forms that overcome these problems. Biomass like algae seem to have a ton of potential, so keep an eye on how this field develops in the future. The results may be very positive.

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