WASHINGTON, Dec. 9, 2015 - Even when factors such as
harvesting and transportation are taken into account, the export of wood
pellets from the U.S. to the European Union is substantially better than coal
when it comes to carbon emissions savings, says a new study by the University of Illinois.
"Even if you include all of these emissions that go
into the process of producing and transporting pellets, and if you include for
all the land-use changes that occur and the fact that you'll be diverting some
amount of pulpwood and other forest biomass from conventional forest products
to pellets, you can still get emissions reductions that range from 74 to 85
percent compared with coal-based electricity," says Madhu Khanna,
professor of agricultural and consumer economics at Illinois.
The researchers also found that the greenhouse gas intensity
of pellets produced using a combination of forest and agricultural biomass is
28 to 34 percent lower compared with pellets produced using only forest
biomass.
"You can produce wood pellets not just from forest
biomass, which is how it's currently done, but you can also use agricultural
biomass crops like miscanthus and switchgrass, which increases the savings
dramatically," say Khanna. "And that's because agricultural biomass
is able to sequester a lot of carbon in the soil while it's growing. Compared
with forests, they sequester much more carbon. And as a result, the greenhouse
gas intensity produced by the pellets made with agricultural biomass is much
less. So the benefits from pellets increase if you're able to source it from
agricultural biomass rather than just from forests."
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