Sustainability

Energy

Biomass

Advantages of biomass

The use of biomass as fuel leads to advantages. To begin with, it does not increase the global amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The combustion process of biomass frees as much CO2 as the plants have absorbed during their whole life. Moreover, the use of biomass such as forest, agricultural and wood processing residues contributes to keep woods and fields clean and creates new jobs, i.e. a positive impact on employment which, especially in rural areas, is to be added to a smaller “energy dependency” on the countries producing fossil fuels. Among the other advantages there is the fact that it is widely available, it is easy to extract energy from it, it has a low content of sulphur therefore it does not contribute to acid rain, and at the end of the cycle it may act as a potential fertilizer. The different technologies to obtain energy from biomass are very interesting also because obtaining energy from this source means to exploit raw materials that provoke pollution (dumps, cesspools, woods and uncultivated and/or abandoned lands, etc. This source also encourages to reforest barren surfaces according to the rotation principle, at the advantage of hydro-geological resistance to landslides. Forest activity also allows to discourage arson activities.