Your Questions About Renewable Energy Definition

admin answers:

It almost sounds as if you are not comfortabe with the term biomass/biomass energy. The “bio” portion of the word comes from biology. The “mass” portion refers to any object with mass or dimention. More often than not, biomass energy is used in conjunction with energy derived from living or dead vegetation from small plants to huge trees. In times past, fecal methane energy (poop power, or what causes the powerful smell of fecal matter) was certainly considered and discussed when biomass energy was mentioned; I’ve listed a couple of Wikipedia pages that better explain just what biomass energy is and is not. Also, a site that is sort of a clearing house and reporting group of biomass projects about the US. You will find additional links on each page/site. (By the way, entering fecal methane energy into the search engine gives a couple of good references too.)

If you’re speaking of chopping down trees and burning them in a fireplace, folks have been doing that for hundreds of years. It is often not considered the best “green” solution to household heating. For as many folks that have chopped or sawed down 60′-200′ trees for firewood through the history of all mankind, far more have gleaned an assortment of biomass materials for heating and cooking purposes. Dried animal dung/scat/poop has been gathered and burned on almost every continent of the world; it is still a routine practice in many areas of the world. Just as many people have gathered and burned fallen branches, dead trees, shrubs, and grasses for the purpose of cooking and heating. All of these fit the biomass energy definition.

Most of the gleaned items we’ve burned as fuel over the time of mankind have been waste or discarded products from some other element of our environment and ecosystem. I will guess that you are not living a nomadic life across the grass plains of the US where buffalo chips are littered across the ground. Rather, your environment and ecosystem is a some combination of “modern industrial society” and agrarian based food products. There is hardly a town in the industrial world that doesn’t have some type of a deep-fat frier. And, where there is a deep fat frier, there is a frier grease disposal need. Did you know that biodiesel can be made from this otherwise waste product? (Check out the fourth link below.) In fact, it is possible for individuals to convert their own vehicle diesel engines and manufacture their own biodiesel in the garage from frier fat?

Just what other biomass based products are readily available in your community, I don’t know. But, it seems as if most of the biomass energy being generated and used in the US today begins with some type of biomass that is the waste stream or by-product of another process, manufacturing plant, or agricultural production. The advantage of this type of biomass energy production is that it more completely or fully uses the materials and by-products of an existing process rather than discarding them unused.

Now, if you include fecal methane energy…where ever there are people or animals gathered, there is opportunity. Again, what the use of fecal methane energy does is more completely and fully use the waste or by-products of other processes. – In this case, it would be good to conjure up the concept of more completely and fully using the elsewise, underutilized, by-product energy of the process of fueling human or animal life.

One of the issues clouding the definition and the use of the term biodiesel is whether to include only plant, vegetation, and vegeartian masses. Or, does one also include things that are in whole or part ominivore or carnivore based?

admin answers:

Renewable energy is energy generated from natural resources—such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat—which are renewable (naturally replenished)Renewable energy is derived from natural processes that are replenished constantly. In its various forms, it derives directly from the sun, or from heat generated deep within the earth. Included in the definition is electricity and heat generated from solar, wind, ocean, hydropower, biomass, geothermal resources, and biofuels and hydrogen derived from renewable resources.

Each of these sources has unique characteristics which influence how and where they are used.

Sustainable energy sources are most often regarded as including all renewable sources, such as biofuels, solar power, wind power, wave power, geothermal power and tidal power. It usually also includes technologies that improve energy efficiency