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      • Land Use Feasibility
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  • Conclusions

land use feasibility

The land use required to support a sustainable biomass fuel supply is often overlooked in literature and by biomass supporters. Admittedly at the moment, even suppliers endorsed by both Governmental and Non-governmental organisations cannot prove that they are sourcing biomass from properly managed sources. Therefore, if trends continue, these resources will be exhausted and new landscapes will be required to meet biomass fuel demands. Growing biomass for fuel has other issues too. Biodiversity can be affected as a monoculture is created across the landscape – destroying the potential for a variety of ecosystems to develop. In addition to this, there is the life/habitats lost when (for example) forestry is harvested. This could be very damaging to the environment if the correct mitigation measures are not put in place. 

For our specific case study, we looked at a way of quantifying how much land space would be required for a housing district. This was achieved using the following technique (derived from information available at www.biomassenergycenter.org.uk):

1.       Finding the typical biomass per hectare available for the type of biomass being considered

2.       If not already in terms of dry matter, apply the following equation to convert the value to “dry fuel”:
Picture
Where:
  • W_1 = Green weight
  • W_2 = Dry weight
  • MC_1 = Green moisture content (as a decimal)
  • MC_2 = Dry moisture content (as a decimal)
Note: Typical hardwood moisture content is around 50%. It was assumed for purposes of our investigation that dry matter would have a 25% moisture content.

3.       Take this (dry) mass per hectare per year and divide it into the annual fuel demand for the housing district in question.

4.       Consider harvesting cycles and crop rotation requirements to see if this has an effect on the land requirements

It is worthwhile to note that the “per year” yield obtained from forestry is much less than Short Rotation energy crops. Many energy crops can be harvested yearly whilst forestry tend to need to wait until maturity before harvest. Therefore energy crops are more desirable in terms of land space, but this has an adverse effect due to it being more intense on the land resource and it has a much greater impact on biodiversity.
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