In a recent opinion piece (“We can’t burn our way out of the climate crisis,” Concord Monitor, 4/2) readers are warned that New Hampshire is facing a climate crisis and that we must move further away from fossil fuels and end the use of biomass (wood chips) to make power. Ironically, what that fails to recognize is that ending biomass power will lead to the increased use of fossil fuels in this region.
As I write this, (according to ISO-New England) the New England region is getting 66% of our power from natural gas, 18% from nuclear power, but only 1.6% from biomass power. True, those percentages vary daily, but biomass has been, and likely will remain, a small part of the overall energy mix in New England. Yet, from a climate perspective, biomass’ relatively small contribution to the power grid has a disproportionate benefit to the environment. This benefit is three-fold.
First, this power, as determined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is close to “carbon neutral.”
Active Energy Group plc (LON:AEG) is a biomass based renewable energy business focussed on using its proprietary technology to transform low-cost or waste biomass material into renewable biomass fuels, thus creating next generation biomass products. AEG’S CoalSwitch® is a second generation biomass fuel that has been tested, and proven, to replace the traditional coal fired-power industry and existing renewable biomass industry without requiring plant modification.