Biomass is a renewable source of energy that comes from plants and animals and it’s also an organic material. It contains stored energy from the sun. During burning of biomass, the chemical energy in it is released as heat. Moreover, biomass can be directly burned or transformed into liquid biofuels or biogas that can be again burned as fuels. Biomass gas releases carbon dioxide but still it has been categorized as renewable energy source due to the fact that the plant stocks can be substituted with new growth. Biomass tends to cover around half of our total renewable energy consumption and it aims at contributing to half of the EU 2020 renewable energy target.
Alternatively, natural gas is a mixture of hydrocarbon gas comprising of methane and minute amount of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, hydrogen sulphide or helium. Natural gas is also a type of fossil fuel which is presently abundant on Earth. Besides, Propane being a by-product of natural gas production, there are other Natural Gas Products which can benefit mankind extensively.
It known to us that biomass has many advantages over fossil fuels as the former reduces the amount of carbon emission. Listed below are some of the benefits of biomass:
- First and foremost, biomass is a renewable source of energy and it cannot be worn-out. As its commonly extracted from plants, Biomass will remain as renewable energy source as long as plants exists on this planet.
- Biomass aids in reducing the amount of GHG that influences global warming and climate change. The levels of emission caused by biomass is much smaller than the fossil fuels. In terms of the amount of carbon emissions, one of the basic difference between biomass and fossil fuel is that the carbon dioxide which has been absorbed by plant for its growth is returned back to the atmosphere during its burning for the generation of biomass energy. Whereas, the carbon dioxide produced from fossil fuels increases the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere.
- Biomass energy helps to keep a clean environment around us. Due to increasing population in the world, the generatedwaste is also increasing. However, disposal of these wastes is a challenging task. The garbage generated harms the ecological balance, so to maintain the ecosystem biogas is of utmost importance.
- Biomass is a profusely available energy source. The sources of biomass energy come from agriculture, forestry, fisheries, aquaculture, algae and other wastes. As per the opinion of many energy experts, biomass is one of the best available organic energy source.
- GHG maintains equilibrium for a wide range of technologies to produce electricity and heat. A well-known energy retailer named Ontario Wholesale Energy can use the biomass at a risk free and fixed rate program. For some biomass systems net GHG emissions savings are shown to be 40% more than the substituted fossil alternative, whereas some score only 4%. Hence environment is benefitted widely and the effective value depends on the particular application situation like technology, scale, etc.
Thus, based on these parameters Biomass can be considered to be a better alternative to Natural Gas.