Biopower: Technologies, Policies, and Opportunities

According to the US Energy Information Administration, renewable energy accounted for nearly seven percent of total energy supply and nine percent of total electricity generation in the United States in 2007. Biomass accounted for nearly half of US renewable energy power production, ranking second after hydroelectric energy. Biomass resources are regionally distributed across the United States, which allows for the use of local feedstocks in the production of biopower. Even though biomass has been used as a source of energy ever since humans first discovered fire, biomass has significant untapped potential, especially woody biomass, which is widely available but underutilized. Tapping renewable biomass resources from America’s farms, forests, and open spaces can enable the United States to lower its greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, improve energy security, reduce energy price volatility, and stimulate economic development in rural communities across the nation.

On August 21, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing in conjunction with the House Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Caucus on current biopower (electricity and heat) technology – its potential, benefits and policy needs. Congress, the business community, environmental advocates, and American voters alike are searching for options to address ever higher energy prices, increased reliance on energy imports, and the threats posed by rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Sustainable energy technologies that generate heat and electricity from biomass have the potential to play a large role in addressing these issues and sustainably diversifying our nation’s energy supplies.

Current biopower system technologies, which rely on the use of abundant renewable resources such as agriculture residues, low-value forestry materials, municipal and industrial solid waste, and energy crops, include direct-firing, co-firing, gasification, pyrolysis, and anaerobic digestion. Biomass can be combusted at very high efficiencies (up to 90%) to produce renewable thermal energy, electric power, or “combined heat-and-power” applications. In addition, valuable biomass co-products can be produced in tandem with energy, including soil additives, industrial chemicals, plastics, resins, and livestock feed. Production of these co-products will increase the benefit gained from each unit of biomass and further reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, making biomass more profitable and sustainable. The key to moving these and other new technologies forward is to improve the overall efficiency and economics of biopower production while creating appropriate regionally-based solutions.

• Biomass power facilities have been up and runing for a long time and can produce a significant amount of renewable energy as well as other benefits including reducing the amount of waste going to landfills, reducing wildfire risk and intensity, and stimulating rural economies.     
• Biopower plants can provide local jobs as well as a new revenue stream for farmers and forest landowners.
• Biomass is a resource that is available nationwide, whether crop residues, energy crops, or woody biomass (the growth of which is exceeding removal rates). 
• Waste-to-energy requires little subsidies and little government investment for projects to develop.
• Biomass co-firing allows existing power plants to produce renewable energy while replacing a portion of fossil fuel.
• Biomass repowering can replace all fossil fuel at an existing facility and add value to existing plants while preserving jobs.
• Biomass energy will not develop at its full potential without a number of important policy solutions, including extending the production tax credits, equalizing the credit between closed and open loop systems, making co-firing eligible for all incentives, and writing a flexible and inclusive definition of renewable biomass that is similar for all incentives (including the RFS). There should be parity between open and closed loop feedstocks, as well as between electricity and thermal energy generation.