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Why Small-Scale Biomass Energy Projects Aren't a Solution To Climate Change
Lasrick writes "Roberto Bissio has an excellent piece in a roundtable on biomass energy, pointing out that small scale biomass energy projects designed for people in poor countries aren't really a solution to climate change. After pointing out that patent protections could impede wide-spread adoption, Bissio adds that the people in these countries aren't really contributing to climate change in the first place: 'Why? Because poor people, whose carbon emissions these technologies would reduce, produce very little carbon in the first place. As I mentioned in Round One, the planet's poorest 1 billion people are responsible for only 3 percent of global carbon emissions. The 1.26 billion people whose countries belong to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development account for 42 percent of emissions. The rich, if they reduced their emissions by just 8 percent, could achieve more climate mitigation than the poor could achieve by reducing their emissions to zero. The rich could manage this 8 percent reduction by altering their lifestyles in barely noticeable ways. For the poor, a reduction of 100 percent would imply permanent misery.'"
Poor people may not have much of a carbon footprint, but if there is no alternative to deforesting your island home, then the impact on the environment would be larger than just how much CO2 you produce.
More music, fewer hits
Most people have ideological blinders on. In politics, it is easy to see. The conservatives rail against the high cost of government (perhaps true although talking only about cost without considering benefit seems stoopid) yet spend their time complaining about the NIH or some silly program that is .000001% of the budget.
Same with energy solutions and climate change. Some folks think batteries are going to save us because apparently their thinking about energy generation stops at the electric plug.
One reason the cost of solar has yet to catch up to the cost of oil is because every time the price of oil goes up, there is more oil available. When the cost goes up, it is profitable to drill deeper and to keep marginal wells and refineries open longer. Basic economics.
We need affordable energy today. I think giving the poor people who need energy today a cheap and hopefully sustainable solution is addressing the issue (instead of increasing it by giving them oil wells and SUVs) but it doesn't address the big sunk costs of dams which are silting up or transmission wires which are growing old or energy generating plants which last for 40 or 60 years.
Same old same old. Most of the folks who present solutions can't even accurately describe the problem and the current situation.