+2
Trees are a crop and if managed and harvested properly it does not have to lead to deforestation nor does any biodiversity have to be lost.
You talk as if all the fuel used in biomass power plants are trees cut down for the purpose, that certainly is not true in Europe. The materials that make up biomass fuels are: scrap lumber; forest debris; certain crops; manure; and some types of waste residues.
With a constant supply of waste – from construction and demolition activities, to wood not used in papermaking, to municipal solid waste – to manure from our farm animals, green energy production can continue indefinitely. Waste residues will always exist – in terms of scrap wood, mill residuals and forest resources; and properly managed forests will always have more trees, and the residual biological matter from those crops.
A report into the use of Europe's biomass power stations found "The most common types of biomass energy applications reduce carbon dioxide emissions 55 to 98 percent compared to fossil fuels, even when transported long distances, as long as the biomass production does not cause any land-use change."
The concept of burning wood instead of coal in our power plants is a bit pointless as what is coal but ancient forests. The issue is burning the resource at a rate faster than it is produced by nature not how long it's been around.
The arguement is that trees grow and therefore it's a green form of energy (the counter arguement that trees don't grow again when the land can't sustain it (let alone the biodiversity that is lost) so the argement is poppycock)
(Drax powerstation burns 1BN tonnes of "biomas" every year, the EU burning rate of it is about three times that and set to increase much further)
