eddodge

Recent articles by Michael T. Klare and Christian Parenti in the "Freedom from Oil" issue present the conventional vision of a future energy supply based on renewables.  Both authors argue that wind, solar electric and other technologies feeding a smart grid represent the future of clean energy.  Unfortunately this electricity-centric proposal fails to displace fossil fuels because it does not provide the products we derive from fossil fuels, namely heat and chemicals.  Fossil fuels should be thought of as stored thermal energy, available in solid, liquid and gaseous forms, which are then used to provide space heating, electricity and locomotion, as well as chemical feedstocks for plastics and synthetics.  Electricity does not provide stored heat and chemicals but we have a massive resource available that can, and it is biomass from our farms, fields and forests.  Every product that is derived from an oil well or other fossil fuel can also be derived from some form of biomass.  Biomass should be elevated to first priority among the varieties of renewable energy, instead of being treated dismissively, as it already provides the greatest quantities of clean energy today, will likely provide the lions share of clean energy in the future, does not require new or exotic technologies, and is the only way to directly replace fossil fuels.  The right policies supporting biomass energy, namely price supports and a fossil carbon tax, could quickly inject new economic life into rural America and immediately reduce pollution by directly displacing fossil fuels. 

Technology is not the problem in utilizing biomass energy since the engineering solutions have been around for a long time. Biomass can provide replacements for natural gas via gasification, for coal via torrefaction, and for gasoline via Fischer-Tropsch syntheisis and any number of other pathways.  These products can be used in conventional stoves, furnaces, boilers and engines with cleaner emissions than their fossil brethren and without needing to retool our entire society around a new and unproven technical paradigm.  The Europeans have long embraced biomass as a major component of their energy mix, and they do not have the agricultural and forest resources we have in North America.  The hurdle in embracing biomass energy has never been technical, it is economic and political.  In today's retail prices biomass energy is more expensive than the cheapest fossil fuels, but biomass does not benefit from a century's worth of public and private investment as well as massive infrastructure and huge economies of scale.  The retail price of fossil fuels does not include the cost of pollution and foreign wars, which is why we need a carbon tax to help include those hidden costs in the equation.  

Biomass energy should be given a price support, just as all major agricultural commodities receive, so that retail prices for biomass and fossil fuels are even. If biomass were to receive federal price supports there would be an explosion of innovation and entrepreneurialism and a revitalization of rural America as we put millions of people to work harvesting grasses, ag waste and wood and refining those raw materials into the fuel and chemical products we need to operate our modern society.  The critical variables in utilizing biomass correctly will be proper land management so we don't rape the land, as well as modern combustion devices optimized to burn biomass efficiently with minimal emissions.  Any product made from an oil well can be made from a farm, we just need to put in the policies to make it happen.