Climate Change

Perhaps the greatest environmental benefit of burning biomass for energy is its positive impact on stabilizing and reducing climate change.

The buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is a significant cause of global climate change. Fossil fuel combustion takes carbon that was locked away underground—as crude oil, coal and gas—and emits it into the atmosphere as CO2.

But wood-burning recycles carbon that was already in the natural carbon cycle. The result is that no new CO2 is added to the atmosphere as long as the forests from which the wood came are sustainably managed (See Forest Sustainability).

When wood energy replaces a fossil fuel system, the net impact is that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are reduced. For this reason, heating with woody biomass is a powerful tool for any institution or community that is interested in meaningfully addressing climate change and renewable energy through its energy use. (See Reports)

If a gas or oil heating system is converted to wood, net CO2 emissions are reduced by 75-90%, depending on the extent to which these conventional fuels are used as backup.