Megan Kuo F Block Dec. 8, 2015 Why Should Biomass Be Further Developed? Global warming is a gradual increase in the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere generally attributed to the greenhouse effect caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, CFCs, and other pollutants. (Oxford Dictionary, n.d.) Global warming now has a huge impact on everyone on Earth. Like mentioned before, it causes an increase in temperature, increases the sea level, harms living animals, and melts glaciers. But what caused all of these catastrophes? Greenhouse gases. These gases come from non-renewable fossil fuels, in other words, to stop global warming, we have to reduce CO2 and greenhouse gases with an alternative energy source, for example, biomass. …show more content…
We should definitely further develop and use biomass more worldwide. Biomass is not only healthy and abundant, but is also already the biggest provider of renewable energy and fastest growing renewable energy throughout history. One: Renewable, Carbon Neutral, and Reduces Harmful Gases Biomass is one of the most healthiest renewable energy that reduces global warming. First of all, it is stated in a study that biomass is actually carbon neutral. The CO2 that is used to produce biomass energy is already part of the atmospheric carbon cycle while fossil fuels increase the level of CO2 in our atmosphere because it’s sucking the CO2 that is supposed to be in Earth’s core to our atmosphere. Therefore, biomass power is only using the carbon already produced to generate energy. …show more content…
In the United States, biomass has been the main energy source for decades till the 1880’s, while China and India was also mostly powered by biomass from the 1950’s to 1960’s. But biomass didn’t make a come back until the 21st century when scientists realized that fossil fuels are polluting Earth and other renewable energy sources such as wind and solar weren’t as effective. In 2007, Europe as a whole decided that they should get 20% of their energy to come from renewable sources again by 2020. (European Commission, 2009) Surely this goal is approachable and can easily be accomplished if people are willing to invest and further develop this. As mentioned before, biomass is the biggest renewable energy provider in the States, and still is in countries like Germany, Denmark, and the whole EU. 7% of Germany’s energy comes from biomass, producing more than 26 million tonnes. (Wilson, 2014) As you can see in the graph above, from 2000 to 2011, biomass has taken a big role in providing Germany with renewable energy. The graph goes from producing about 7 million tonnes of biomass power to about 23 million tonnes or so, which also means that it grew 16 million tonnes within 11 years. Compared to wind and solar energy, where they only grew 5.5 million tonnes in total. (Wilson, 2014) Henceforth, we can predict that the graph