What Are the Benefits of Biomass and Energy Crops?

With climate change targets looming and more needing to be done to reduce greenhouse gases, we often think of renewable energy sources that solar panels, wind farms, and even simple actions like sorting our rubbish to be recycled.

There’s also another way to get energy: biomass. Biomass is material from biological processes and can be anything from animal waste to harvested material from plants. Anything that burns has energy in it and when we eat something, we also take the energy from it.

When it comes to creating fuel and generating electricity, however, we usually extract energy from fuel by burning it. Traditionally, we’ve done this with wood before turning to fossil fuels in the industrial revolution and we haven’t looked back. Now, due to climate change, it might be a good time to seriously consider the potential of biomass.

What Are the Different Types of Biomass?

There are two ways to think of biomass sources, those that we create specifically for use in biomass and resources that contain energy that would otherwise be thrown away, discarded, or disposed of.

As almost every biological process is less than 100% efficient, there is unused or unusable energy left in waste. Animal manure and even human sewage can be used as sources of biomass as there’s some energy left in these materials. The same is true for rubbish, leftover food, etc.

Vegetable oils and animal fats are also other sources that contain energy and when used in cooking, especially deep frying, the majority of certain types of oils are just thrown away. These can now be used as a source of biomass.

Finally, some plants can be used and grown directly to contribute to biomass. We’ve used wood as fairly crude biomass for thousands of years for heating and cooking, but now, we’ve discovered that certain plants are a better source of biomass fuel than wood: energy crops.

What Is An Energy Crop?

As the name suggests, an energy crop is a plant that contains a lot of energy. This energy isn’t necessarily obtained through eating the plant, but rather used in processes such as heating, generating electricity, or creating fuels to be used later.

These are usually better than wood as the crops provide a high yield, require little maintenance, and can reduce deforestation since we can use them instead of wood as a source of fuel for power, heat, or even break them down into other fuel types for later use.

One such plant, miscanthus giganteus, is so good at the job that SavSmart Biomass is creating a miscanthus plantation in northeast Zambia to help reduce deforestation, create greener fuels, and reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuel imports.

If the project works, and founding backers like Tor Anders Petterøe believe it will, there’ll be opportunities to expand into other African nations to help with establishing energy crop plantations and providing job opportunities for subsistence farming communities in and around central and southern Africa.