Evaluating Competing Uses of Biomass for Greenhouse Gas Mitigation

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Biomass (plant matter and organic waste) is the world's largest renewable energy source, accounting for approximately 10% of global primary energy supply. Concern over greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel depletion has led to a growing interest in the use of biomass for both energy and materials. To date, national policies have focused primarily on using biomass to produce transportation fuels. This narrow focus overlooks other potential uses of biomass, such as to generate heat and electricity, as a chemical feedstock, aviation fuel, or carbon storage medium. Previous studies have shown that biomass resources, while substantial, will likely be insufficient to meet global energy demand. As a result, there is an urgent need to set priorities for biomass use, and for these priorities to form the basis of national policies. This program will establish which uses of biomass have the greatest potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, without compromising other environmental goals. Prioritizing among different uses of biomass is complicated by the sheer number of possible product pathways: difference sources of biomass can be transformed using a wide variety of conversion technologies to produce a large number of different end products. This work will provide a critical evaluation of existing literature surrounding the climate impact of biomass-based energy and products, and identify which bio-based pathways achieve greenhouse gas reductions with the highest level of confidence. It will further address the monetary costs of these different pathways, and construct a framework to evaluate the impact of these pathways on other environmental metrics such as local air and water quality. This work comes at a critical time for Canada, which has among the world's largest biomass resources, but has only recently begun developing a national strategy surrounding uses of biomass (the bioeconomy'). Results are expected to guide both government and industrial decision makers toward more coherent policies for the development of biomass resources.