
I say all this as a background introduction to my main point
in responding to the Biomass Magazine blog post. I believe that the conversation
needs to move beyond the “Manomet Study” and instead focus the rapidly emerging
body of science from around the world. It is a very rich area of scientific
inquiry that has increased rapidly since 2010. The scientific community appears
to be developing common themes that move beyond the view that biogenic energy
sources are inherently carbon neutral. Among those themes is the development of
a dynamic baseline evaluation framework that incorporates the complexity of
forest management and the forest products sector.
Anna Simet’s call for a “new study on biogenic emissions” to
come out is illustrative of the gap in understanding between the scientific
community completing these studies and the biomass energy industry. We need to
close this gap. Actually, there have been many studies on biogenic emissions published
since the Manomet Study. In fact, my colleague Thomas Buchholz at the Spatial
Informatics Group and I have found nearly 60 studies that look at the question
of woody biomass emissions compared to fossil fuel equivalents. Similarly, a
group in Europe (see Lamers and
Junginger, 2013) recently completed a thorough review of several carbon
accounting studies. Both efforts have concluded that the overwhelming majority
of these studies identify a carbon payback (or carbon debt) period before
bioenergy scenarios are favorable to fossil energy scenarios from an emissions
standpoint. Most of the studies that were reviewed in these two meta-analyses
have been published since 2010. A report
from several industry groups in Europe, Canada and the US was also recently
released that acknowledges that there is a carbon debt. The overwhelming
majority of the studies coming out since 2010 fundamentally conclude the same
thing as the Manomet Study: when you use
biomass from the forest for energy, there will be an initial emission of
greenhouse gases that is greater than fossil fuels (per unit of energy
generated), but these emissions are removed from the atmosphere as the
harvested forests re-grow. Some scenarios have shorter “debt” period than
others, and there are contexts where the debt is paid off immediately. We are completing
a meta-analysis of these published studies to try to understand the many
factors that drive the length of carbon payback period. We hope to have this
work written up in the next few months to synthesize and bring greater
awareness to the current scientific thought on this topic.
Again, I firmly believe that the conversation needs to move
beyond the “Manomet Study” and instead focus on what the rapidly emerging
science is telling us about where the development of biomass energy from
forests is a low risk proposition from an atmospheric emissions perspective. I
agree with Anna Simet, it really is all about the carbon math. It’s complicated
math, but necessary to do to drive activities that best use our forests as a
climate mitigation tool.
See also: