Thinking about my response to the earlier post in Huffington post about using food crops to make biofuels, I started looking at the amount of fuel that could be generated from existing forest materials such as brush wood. There's a paper on Science direct which gives this as the yield from scrub in Galicia (northern Spain).
Bushes occupy around 15% of the forest surface of Galicia [9], approximately 450 000 ha. A rational planning would allow to obtain about 4x 6 ton of forest residues every year.
The thrust of the piece is in terms of electrical energy generation, but this kind of forest waste could be used to make liquid fuels. It could also be generated during forest management that could reduce the level and intensity of forest fires.
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Just how much forest waste is there?
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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on April 23, 2008 2:52 PM.
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Comments (3)
Yup. It would be nice to have a btter web site than
http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=2815
to give an overview of the world's bio-energy potentials.
Posted by David B. Benson | April 24, 2008 11:48 PM
Posted on April 24, 2008 23:48
Hey David, good to hear from you. The link is interesting, and I guess does not include food crops in the mixture. I wonder if the impacts on land and water useand biodiversity are included in this?
Posted by Biofuelsimon | April 25, 2008 2:16 PM
Posted on April 25, 2008 14:16
Simon --- As best as I can make out from the papers, the authors considered food, animal feed, fibre and leaving various forests completely alone. They had to consider certain aspects of land and water use, else the conclusions would be meaningless.
It does not appear that biodiversity entered into their deliberations, but I've only read a couple of the many study papers.
Posted by David B. Benson | April 25, 2008 9:46 PM
Posted on April 25, 2008 21:46