{"id":8674,"date":"2010-09-15T17:19:55","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T22:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=8674"},"modified":"2010-09-15T17:19:55","modified_gmt":"2010-09-15T22:19:55","slug":"plants-power-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/plants-power-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Limits and Potential of Plant-Based Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a> As oil and natural gas reserves are being depleted, the world\u2019s attention is increasingly turning to plant-based energy sources. These include food crops, forest industry byproducts, sugar industry byproducts, plantations of fast-growing trees, crop residues, and urban tree and yard wastes\u2014all of which can be used for electrical generation, heating, or the production of automotive fuels.<\/p>\n The potential use of plant-based sources of energy is limited because even corn\u2014the most efficient of the grain crops\u2014can convert just 0.5 percent of solar energy into a usable form. In contrast, solar PV<\/a> or solar thermal power plants<\/a> convert roughly 15 percent of sunlight into a usable form, namely electricity. In a land-scarce world, energy crops cannot compete with solar electricity, much less with the far more land-efficient wind power. In the forest products industry, including both sawmills and paper mills, waste has long been used to generate electricity. U.S. companies burn forest wastes both to produce process heat for their own use and to generate electricity for sale to local utilities. The 11,000 megawatts in U.S. plant-based electrical generation comes primarily from burning forest waste.<\/p>\n Wood waste is also widely used in urban areas for combined heat and power production, with the heat typically used in district heating systems. In Sweden, nearly half of all residential and commercial buildings are served with district heating systems. As recently as 1980, imported oil supplied over 90 percent of the heat for these systems, but by 2007 oil had been largely replaced by wood chips and urban waste.<\/p>\n In the United States, St. Paul, Minnesota\u2014a city of 275,000 people\u2014began to develop district heating more than 20 years ago. It built a combined heat and power plant to use tree waste from the city\u2019s parks, industrial wood waste, and wood from other sources. The plant, using 250,000 tons or more of waste wood per year, now supplies district heating to some 80 percent of the downtown area. This shift to wood waste largely replaced coal, thus simultaneously cutting carbon emissions by 76,000 tons per year and providing a sustainable source of heat and electricity.<\/p>\n The sugar industry recently has begun to burn cane waste to cogenerate heat and power. This received a big boost in Brazil, when companies with cane-based ethanol distilleries realized that burning bagasse, the fibrous material left after the sugar syrup is extracted, could simultaneously produce heat for their fermentation process and generate electricity that they could sell to the local utility. This system, now well established, is spreading to sugar mills in other countries.<\/p>\n Within cities, garbage is also burned to produce heat and power after, it is hoped, any recyclable materials have been removed. In Europe, waste-to-energy plants supply 20 million consumers with heat. France, with 128 plants, and Germany, with 67 plants, are the European leaders. In the United States, some 89 waste-to-energy plants convert 20 million tons of waste into power for 6 million consumers. It would, however, be preferable to work toward a zero-garbage economy where the energy invested in combustible materials could largely be recovered by recycling.<\/p>\n Until we get zero waste, the methane (natural gas) produced in existing landfills as organic materials in buried garbage decompose can also be tapped to produce industrial process heat or to generate electricity in combined heat and power plants. The 35-megawatt landfill-gas power plant planned by Puget Sound Energy and slated to draw methane from Seattle\u2019s landfill will join more than 100 other such power plants in operation in the United States.<\/p>\n Near Atlanta, Interface\u2014the world\u2019s largest manufacturer of industrial carpet\u2014convinced the city to invest $3 million in capturing methane from the municipal landfill and to build a nine-mile pipeline to an Interface factory. The natural gas in this pipeline, priced 30 percent below the world market price, meets 20 percent of the factory\u2019s needs. The landfill is projected to supply methane for 40 years, earning the city $35 million on its original investment while reducing costs for Interface.<\/p>\n Crops are also used to produce automotive fuels. In 2009 the world produced 19 billion gallons of fuel ethanol and 4 billion gallons of biodiesel. Half of the ethanol came from the United States, a third from Brazil, and the remainder from a dozen or so other countries, led by China, Canada, and France. Germany and France are responsible for a combined 30 percent of the world\u2019s biodiesel output; the other major producers are the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Italy.<\/p>\n Once widely heralded as the alternative to oil, crop-based fuels have come under closer scrutiny in recent years, raising serious doubts about their feasibility. In the United States, which surged ahead of Brazil in ethanol production in 2005, the near doubling of output during 2007 and 2008 helped to drive world food prices to all-time highs<\/a>. In Europe, with its high goals for biodiesel use and low potential for expanding oilseed production, biodiesel refiners are turning to palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia, driving the clearing of rainforests for palm plantations.<\/p>\n
\n By Lester R. Brown<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nBurning Plant-Based Materials for Heat & Power<\/h2>\n
Plant-Based Fuels: More Cost than Opportunity?<\/h2>\n