Technically, yes, since it is composed of woody debris, algae, agricultural waste, fish guts, or other living or formerly living matter, which can be regrown and replenished.
But renewability is also related to speed of consumption—when a power plant uses 70 tons of biomass per hour, the forests cannot be expected to keep up, as Michael Donnelly observes on www.counterpunch.org.
Another problem is that much of the woody biomass used for fuel is culled from dead wood and leftovers from the timber industry, which Donnelly says are essential as natural soil-builders and habitat for birds and insects. Furthermore, biomass emissions contain large amounts of polluting nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
On the other hand, I just wrote an article for InterPress Service on a Wisconsin paper mill that has converted to biomass fuel, reducing CO2 output and eliminating use of coal. (Read the article at http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49466.)
The mill is scheduled to build a biorefinery that will ultimately use the biomass to produce green diesel for the transportation industry, while diverting the heat produced by the conversion process into running the paper mill. It appears to be a beneficial set-up, carefully tuned to the amount of waste biomass the region can easily provide. When dealing with an industry that is would otherwise be highly polluting and has easy access to woody biomass, the advantages may outweigh the drawbacks.
In case of power plants, burning biomass requires vast amounts of wood, which must be often be shipped long distances. Addressing climate change may call for different solutions in different situations. We need to take a careful look at the effects of biomass fuels before using them in any given application.
After all, even petroleum is renewable, if you have millions of years to wait.
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