California Biopower Impact Project
Investigating the emissions impacts of converting forest and crop biomass to electricity
Cal Poly Humboldt Sponsored Programs Foundation
Recipient
Arcata, CA
Recipient Location
2nd
Senate District
2nd
Assembly District
$999,998
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
The research team conducted a net potential recoverable forest and agricultural residue assessment and compiled a spatially explicit database of these materials. The team also developed a residual biomass-to-energy life cycle emissions accounting framework that considers various supply-chain and end-use scenarios for California and published an interactive accounting tool for GHG and criteria pollutants emissions accounting from woody biomass converted to electricity. Additionally, the research team completed the wildfire risk impact assessment, a characterization of secondary environmental and climate impacts from woody biomass, and a set of policy recommendations. The project final report has been published.
View Final ReportThe Issue
Biomass is a potentially attractive energy resource that supports California's climate goals. However, there are significant gaps in existing life cycle assessment frameworks and methodologies regarding the climate impact associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from biomass use for electricity generation. Furthermore, biomass residue extraction has complex environmental and ecosystem impacts (positive and negative), some of which have not been well integrated into current life cycle assessments. Finally, there are significant market barriers to biomass mobilization in the forestry sector that need to be addressed in order for forest biomass utilization for energy to scale up.
Project Innovation
This project developed an attributional life cycle assessment framework for various biomass-to-electricity supply chain and end-use scenarios that are specific to California. The research quantifies on a fine geospatial scale the amount of technically recoverable forest and agricultural biomass residue material in California, and it considers future impact projections from different climate change scenarios and fire risk probabilities under various harvest and land management scenarios. Based on the estimates, researchers are developed a detailed life cycle inventory - disaggregated by parcel, supply chain, and end-use characteristics. Results supported the development of the California Residual Biomass-to-energy Carbon Accounting Tool (http://schatzcenter.org/cbrec/) and can inform policy decisions on the role of biomass residues in California's energy portfolio.
Project Benefits
This research project develops a rigorous California-specific lifecycle emissions accounting framework for evaluation of various forest biomass residue mobilization scenarios, quantification of key potential environmental and climate impacts associated with biomass residue mobilization and conversion to electricity, and identification of potential pathways for offsetting biomass residue mobilization costs. The framework and Carbon Accounting Tool (C-BREC) will provide California policymakers with an evidence-based, spatially-disaggregated, and probabilistic analysis to aid in creating policies aimed at managing the environmental performance of bioenergy systems. Ultimately, the results from this project will provide information on the topic of carbon neutrality of residual biomass-to-energy production.
Affordability
Lower costs may be realized if the ecosystem service payments coupled with value estimates of potential carbon abatement from biopower exceed the internalized average or marginal wholesale cost per MWh of displaced generation.
Environmental Sustainability
The lifecycle assessment of biomass use for electricity generation will provide new information on the GHG emissions from altered wildfire risk and severity and from altered long-term soil nutrient balance.
Reliability
Increased electricity reliability will be brought about by policies that encourage grid resilience through distributed generation facilities powered by biomass that would diversify California's mix of energy resources.
Key Project Members
Jerome Carman
David Stoms
Subrecipients
Chico Research Foundation
University of Washington
Sierra Institute for Community and Environment
The Watershed Research and Training Center
Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials
Andrea Tuttle
Match Partners
Cal Poly Humboldt Sponsored Programs Foundation
Sierra Institute for Community and Environment
