Our Journey’s Guide
So climate change is a thing that’s happening, I’m not going to give you evidence or go into too much detail about its issues because many much more intelligent people than I probably already have. This article is primarily to discuss one method of climate change prevention proposed by Project Drawdown.
Our mission is to help the world reach “Drawdown” — the point in the future when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline, thereby stopping catastrophic climate change — as quickly, safely, and equitably as possible.
Project Drawdown has a wonderful website at drawdown.org in which they detail climate related new, research, and most notably, their list of climate change solutions. It should be noted however, that no one of these solutions is an end all be all, they are meant to be implemented in different ways and work together to achieve drawdown. With that out of the way, lets get to the titular solution.
Stepping Lightly
This Project Drawdown solution in question is called biomass power, and its concept revolves around converting plants into energy, as opposed to fossil fuels. Essentially, plants would take carbon dioxide out of the air to use as energy, via photosynthesis, and we then use those plants as fuel for our power needs; this would mean we would only be emitting carbon dioxide that was already in the atmosphere, making this a carbon-neutral process.
Unfortunately the idea on paper doesn’t translate perfectly into the real world. The carbon going directly into the plants and coming out may be neutral, but we humans have to contribute to the process in a variety of ways that unbalance the equation. We may have to use pesticides and fertilizers to ensure the plants grow, the plants would likely need to be transported to a different location to be processed, this processing, which most plants would need to undergo to convert them into a form of fuel we can readily use, usually requires us to input chemicals. Another disadvantage is that growing these plants can take up land that would otherwise be used for food production. Based on all this one has to ask if it’s even worth it.
The good news is that there are ways we can mitigate these external costs. A large part of this is being selective in what biomass we choose, for example, certain annual crops such as corn have been found to be as bad, or sometimes even worse for the environment than fossil fuels. On the other hand, perennial plants, those that have life cycles lasting 2–3 years or longer, have been found to be much more environmentally friendly. This doesn’t necessarily mean that trees are a great choice as they are generally harder to process and could contribute to deforestation, but perennial grasses do seem like a good choice as they are easy to grow and their usage as biofuel wouldn’t consume a food source.
How Big of a Step Are We Taking
Now that we’ve established our background on the usage of biomass, let’s talk about its implementation. First of all, as stated biomass power is not a perfect solution, it requires some fairly specific stipulations to ensure its usage is truly beneficial to the environment, and even then it can’t save the environment on its own. This is why Project Drawdown refers to biomass power as a “bridge solution.”
one that can help the world transition from fossil-fuel power to 100 percent clean, renewable energy. Until energy storage grows and the grid becomes more flexible, it can help meet electricity demand, complementing variable wind and solar power.
We don’t necessarily have to use it forever, but it would help keep carbon emissions down as we transition to more efficient, but harder to implement sources of energy. That all being said, Project Drawdown predicts between $51.12 and $62.37 billion USD net cost to implement biomass power to the point where it makes up 1.1% of world electricity generation by 2050. For reference in 2018 biomass power made up approximately 0.28% of world electricity generation and in 2020 it was 1.4% of the U.S. electricity generation. Of course these percentages seem unsubstantial, but the predicted lifetime net savings of the process is between $215.38 and 284.55 billion USD with a 2.52 to 3.57 gigaton reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Like I said earlier these solutions are meant to work together to achieve drawdown and the little things do add up.
Helping Out Along the Way
The main goal of a transition to biomass energy is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but some other benefits could arise naturally from its implementation. For one, by having our energy resource readily available on the surface, there isn’t as much need for processes such as fracking which is incredibly harmful to the environment. If implemented properly, crops planted for use as biofuel can help restore oxygen in the atmosphere, fighting the effects of deforestation. Another benefit is that biological waste from agricultural processes can be put to use as biofuel, eliminating a waste product, while also potentially giving farmers a little extra income. A final example would be that certain plants’ presence can improve the soil and/or water quality of the location in which they’re grown, akin to crop rotation.
What Awaits Us
We’ve come quite a ways and talked quite a bit about biomass power and Project Drawdown. I think it’s clear that using plants as energy isn’t the perfect solution to climate change, but that solution doesn’t really exist perhaps other than change as a concept. We do need to change, but there are so many ways that we can, and should change for the betterment of the world as a whole, both present and future.
I highly recommend looking at the Project Drawdown website which is again drawdown.org, there are some really interesting proposed solutions on there and I think it would be worth your time even just to look at some of the titles, because some are just really fascinating, and some are just little things that you may not realize can have a big impact.