By Rubina Obaid
Competitive financial incentive is one of the major factors in encouraging reforestation of the landscape from where woods are obtained for the purpose of biomass. The replacement of the crop to replant trees for overall forest cover and intensive forest management will result in faster regrowth of new plants.
Climate change is one of the most serious concerns globally, that led biomass to become one of the prime energy sources for transition towards safe energy resources and reduce the use of fossil fuels to mitigate carbon emission. Using wood pellets and logs to burn and obtain secondary energy carriers but environmentalists are also having conflicting views regarding deforestation for wood logs and the damage wreaked to the forests. Future Global energy and contribution of biomass. Whereas, According to the latest research continuous use of wood-derived biomass may result in a potential 30% increase more than a billion hectares that are 2.5 billion acres by the year 2100, provided higher value of product, stringent forest management policies, and incentives.
Competitive financial incentive is one of the major factors in encouraging reforestation of the landscape from where woods are obtained for the purpose of biomass. Future Global energy and contribution of biomass. The replacement of the crop to replant trees for overall forest cover and intensive forest management will result in faster regrowth of new plants. According to the latest report, the area of plantation is increased by 0.32% globally and every 1% increase in the timber price. European Union Renewable Energy Directive considers the use of wood biomass to be one of the safest renewable energy because according to the study wood waste releases the carbon that immediately breaks down naturally, therefore, it is considered as an environment-friendly source.
On the flip side the critics come up with the divergent side of the use of biomass, that huge number of trees are being cut for making wood pellets and the time it will take to replant forests will be too long and the process of carbon sink gets nullified. In the previous year six plaintiffs from US filed a suit against EU for the allegation of conversion of coal to wood pellet burning is leaving a disastrous effect on the atmosphere as the newly planted trees are not effective enough to absorb carbon. Right after the climate summit in December, a new study revealed by European Academies’ Science Advisory Council (EASAC) that warned against the deforestation and waiting for new plants to grow for carbon sequestration while throwing emission in the air by burning trees for energy, henceforth a managed forest that keeps growing sinks in more carbon than new planted trees.
Assistant professor of forest conservation and recreation policy at the University of Maine stressed for the study that biomass is not a perfect cure but killing all incentives to have biomass removed will leave us having loss of forests. Whereas South America was observed as one of the regions where monoculture tree plantation has been increased and the figure doubled over the past thirty years. Hence, Incentivizing wood-based bioenergy and forest sequestration would help in conserving natural forests as well as an increase in carbon sequestration. So the study concludes the results of having benefits using wood-based biomass but it is considered important to have an efficient policy to regulate forest management and carbon sequestration system.
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