Biomass

976 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Different sources of renewable energy essay

Introduction
Energy is a valuable source to people around the world and overtime we have become much dependent upon fossil fuels. Fossil fuels include coal, oil, and natural gas. Although these resources are abundant, they will not always be readily available to us. That is why we need to begin searching for other renewable resources that can create more energy. Biomass is a very important renewable resource and has the potential to be our gateway to a cleaner future.
What is Biomass?
According to Conserve Energy Future, biomass is energy contained within plants and animals. This includes organic matter from plants, animals, and other waste products from organic sources. The process of photosynthesis begins with the chlorophyll found in plants that absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as well as the water from the ground. This energy is then transferred to the animals once the plant is eaten by them. Biomass is considered to be a renewable source of energy because carbon dioxide and water contained inside plants and animals are released back into the atmosphere once they are burned. Large quantities of biomass are also able to regenerate within the time scale that it is being used. According to UCSUSA, most scientists believe that a wide range of biomass resources are very useful because they will reduce the overall carbon emissions along with many other benefits. The sources of biomass include: crops, manure, trees, along with wastes and residues.
Sources of Biomass
Crops, also known as energy crops, can be grown on farms in large quantities. Some may see crops as a waste of land, but energy crops can be grown in ways that do not displace or reduce food production. Energy crops can be grown on marginal lands, pastures, or ...

... middle of paper ...

...o consume more full. To gather enough lumber to power a nation full of vehicles or more power plants, companies would have to clear a lot of forest area. Clearing more forest area can also affect the ecosystem and destroy many homes of plants and animals.
Conclusion
After taking a deeper look into biomass, it seems that this renewable resource could be very beneficial in the future. Biomass is being used in new and advanced ways to produce energy. This has inspired Canada and other areas around the world to improve the biomass energy industry. Today we rely so heavily on fossil fuels. Eventually those sources will run out and we will need to find an alternative. All though biomass has some challenges, it is still an important renewable resource for America to transition to a clean energy future. If developed properly, biomass can produce large amounts of biopower.

Show More
Related

  • Great Bear Rainforest

    2603 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...the improvement in machinery. However, if they were just based on technological improvements, there would not be a continual rise and fall in the logging industry. These periods of increased logging have drastic affects on the environment, today, just like one hundred years ago. More importantly, the growth in technology has led to the reduction of workers. In my opinion, it seems that now we are dealing with the big capitalist pull. Individual companies are buying these forests just to log. For the most part, they are the ones that are reaping the benefits, while destroying habitats for people and animals alike. Thereby changing the relationship of those who work in the industry and that of environmentally conscience society.

    Read More

  • Cutting Trees Dbq

    656 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cutting trees would give us, human beings, a less difficult time living. The article, “Tree Loss” states “ People cut down trees to make room for new farms, housing developments, highways and cities. ” I believe that cutting trees would leave space for new trees to grow. In addition, cutting trees would give space for structures and buildings. Also, the article, “ Tree Loss ” states “ Trees are used to make newspapers, computer paper,

    Read More

  • Human Contribution in Climate Change

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...dition, fossil fuels not only unleash carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but also is harmful to human when exposed for a long period of time, new energy resources would be needed to replace it such as, wind turbans, biomass energy, wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, and hydroelectric energy (Alternative Energy).

    Read More

  • Forests and Coniferous Trees

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    Harvesting trees can have some major impacts on the environment, such as when loggers clear-cut, they can create deforestation and leave many animals and living organisms homeless and can suffer. Deforestation means fewer trees will absorb the carbon dioxide in the air, which can create more greenhouse gas in our atmosphere.

    Read More

  • Ethene To Ethanol

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    The photosynthesis process helps plants to grow and survive before being converted into ethanol. Fossil fuels, however, is a non-renewable energy source.Thousand years are needed for fossil ...

    Read More

  • Renewable Energy: A Bright Future

    697 Words  | 2 Pages

    In chapter thirteen of our book, Environment by Raven and Berg, it shows us just how important renewable energy sources are. Currently the United States of America thrives on the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power. The main problems with these types of fuel are that they are both limited and can be extremely harmful to our environment. They cause global warming, air pollution, acid rain, and oil spills (Environment), and not only that, but in the grand scheme of things, these sources really aren’t even that cheap of a fuel source. There are many alternatives to these all but outdated fuel sources.

    Read More

  • Ancient Egyptian Agriculture.

    1076 Words  | 3 Pages

    Crops, are the fruits, vegetables, or grain that grows from the seeds that they plant during the ploughing and planting season. There were many crops that held important values, or that were more valued than other crops, much like today.

    Read More

  • Fossil Fuels and Alternative Energy Sources

    2001 Words  | 5 Pages

    The three fossil fuels- coal, crude oil, and gas slowly formed over millions of years. These days, we use fossil fuels to power everything- homes, buildings, cars, computers, lights, etc. However, fossil fuels deposits will run out soon, which is a huge problem. Extracting, transporting, and burning fossil fuels are dangerous. There are also many negative biological and environmental impacts that result from the use of fossil fuels, such as ocean acidification, groundwater contamination, land subsidence, oil spills, and global warming. Therefore, we should be trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and explore alternative energy sources such as wind energy, hydroelectricity, and solar energy instead. Our world depends on fossil fuels, but they can also hurt us. Fossil fuels are both a blessing and a curse.

    Read More

  • Discussion of the Issue of Deforestation

    604 Words  | 2 Pages

    To obtain and transport has to be quick, easy and the cost has to be minimal. To make all these possible roads are being built through forests. These causes a great deal of damage to the forests because more trees have to be removed again to mine this merchandise. Brazil is once again a prime. example of forest destruction in the United States.

    Read More

  • The Importance of Photosynthesis and What It Does for Life

    1557 Words  | 4 Pages

    This helps consumers called heterotrophs and autotrophs use organic molecules produced by photosynthesis as a building block for growth and repair and as a source of chemical energy for cellular work. (Mader, 2013) Photosynthesis produces an enormous amount of carbohydrate that humans use to convert it into coal.

    Read More

  • Issues Within the Discipline of Forestry

    4081 Words  | 9 Pages

    The idea of forestry in the sense that we know it today is only about four hundred years old. Forestry developed mainly out of the need for a continual supply of wood products. There were a few forest reserves for hunting or preservation in Europe, but the idea of managing a forest for a number of resources is quite new. There are four stages that almost all societies have gone through when trying to develop this idea of forestry. The first stage has to do with the unregulated abuse of forest products to be used as energy, building supplies and also to be cleared to make way for agricultural land. This creates a kind of domino effect on forests everywhere. The overexploitation of regional forests means there will be a scarcity of products that are considered valuable, which in turn leads to the abuse of more outlying forests and the overexploitation of them and so on and so forth. In the United States this stage was seen with the colonization of America. Colonization began in the eastern U.S. and as a result led to the destruction of forests there. People needed forest supplies to build their homes and farms, and when the regional forests were almost depleted they began taking resources from outlying forests (Kimmins, 1992). The U.S. prior to colonization had an estimated one billion acres of forested land. By the year 1900 that area had been reduced to 567 million acres (Berger, 1998, p.29).

    Read More

  • Thermodynamics

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    Green plants convert the radiant energy emitted by the Sun into useful chemical energy, such as the oxygen that we breathe. The energy transferred between any surroundings and any system can be in the form of various types of work, chemical, mechanical, radiant, electrical, or heat. The second law of thermodynamics is expressed as a cycle in which “all processes occur spontaneously in the direction that increases the entropy of the universe (system plus surrounding).” Entropy, the number of ways the components of a system can be rearranged without changing the system, plays a major role in the second law of thermodynamics.

    Read More

  • Deforestation as a Major Problem

    3202 Words  | 7 Pages

    centuries. Today with an increasing population the amount of wood available has declined seriously in recent decades. People have been harvesting wood to cultivate land, burn, and for the use of raw materials for industry (Urquhart 2014). The estimated amount of deforestation taking place is twenty million hectares per year (Urquhart 2014). Climate change and global warming are just a few of the problems associated with the degradation of our forests.

    Read More

  • Renewable Energy Essay

    1034 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are different kinds of resources that we can use in order to produce renewable energy. Solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power are just some of the kinds of renewable energy that might be the best options to obtain energy because they come from natural resources. Although renewable energy can be expensive to build, it has less environmental damage in comparison to non-renewable energy. Besides the natural resources such as sun, wind, water and hydrogen, we also have geothermal power, and biofuels as renewable sources.

    Read More

  • Energy and Environment

    1014 Words  | 3 Pages

    There are two types of resources using to produce electricity, non-renewable energy resources and renewable energy resources. Non-renewable energy resources or known by fossil fuel such as wood, oil, gas and coal can be defined as solid, liquid or gaseous fuels formed in the ground after millions of years by chemical and physical changes in plants and animal residues under high temperature and pressure.

    Read More

More about Biomass

Open Document