IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i4p1672-1674.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The future of biomass energy: A Fermi-calculation perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Pickard, William F

Abstract

It is argued: (i) that the harvesting of terrestrial solar radiation to perform useful work is at least an order of magnitude more efficient when carried out by solar-thermal or solar-photovoltaic processes than when carried out by way of biomass conversion and (ii) that, therefore, biomass energy is unlikely to compete successfully with inanimately harvested solar energy--except of course in restricted niche applications.

Suggested Citation

  • Pickard, William F, 2010. "The future of biomass energy: A Fermi-calculation perspective," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 1672-1674, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:4:p:1672-1674
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(09)00925-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fthenakis, Vasilis & Mason, James E. & Zweibel, Ken, 2009. "The technical, geographical, and economic feasibility for solar energy to supply the energy needs of the US," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 387-399, February.
    2. Goldemberg, José & Guardabassi, Patricia, 2009. "Are biofuels a feasible option?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 10-14, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pickard, William F., 2013. "Transporting the terajoules: Efficient energy distribution in a post-carbon world," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 51-61.
    2. Pickard, William F., 2012. "A Nation-Sized Battery?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 263-267.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. DeCanio, Stephen J. & Fremstad, Anders, 2011. "Economic feasibility of the path to zero net carbon emissions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1144-1153, March.
    2. Abolhosseini, Shahrouz & Heshmati, Almas & Altmann, Jörn, 2014. "A Review of Renewable Energy Supply and Energy Efficiency Technologies," IZA Discussion Papers 8145, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Köberle, Alexandre C. & Gernaat, David E.H.J. & van Vuuren, Detlef P., 2015. "Assessing current and future techno-economic potential of concentrated solar power and photovoltaic electricity generation," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 739-756.
    4. Wang, Anming & Liu, Jiping & Liu, Ming & Li, Gen & Yan, Junjie, 2019. "Dynamic modeling and behavior of parabolic trough concentrated solar power system under cloudy conditions," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 106-120.
    5. Sener, Can & Fthenakis, Vasilis, 2014. "Energy policy and financing options to achieve solar energy grid penetration targets: Accounting for external costs," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 854-868.
    6. Martín, Helena & de la Hoz, Jordi & Velasco, Guillermo & Castilla, Miguel & García de Vicuña, José Luís, 2015. "Promotion of concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) in Spain: Performance analysis of the period 1998–2013," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1052-1068.
    7. Paul Westacott & Chiara Candelise, 2016. "A Novel Geographical Information Systems Framework to Characterize Photovoltaic Deployment in the UK: Initial Evidence," Energies, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-20, January.
    8. Amy H. I. Lee & Chun Yu Lin & He-Yau Kang & Wen Hsin Lee, 2012. "An Integrated Performance Evaluation Model for the Photovoltaics Industry," Energies, MDPI, vol. 5(4), pages 1-21, April.
    9. Herche, Wesley, 2017. "Solar energy strategies in the U.S. utility market," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 590-595.
    10. Lenzen, Manfred & McBain, Bonnie & Trainer, Ted & Jütte, Silke & Rey-Lescure, Olivier & Huang, Jing, 2016. "Simulating low-carbon electricity supply for Australia," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 553-564.
    11. Mei, Bin & Wetzstein, Michael, 2017. "Burning wood pellets for US electricity generation? A regime switching analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 434-441.
    12. Aina Maimó-Far & Alexis Tantet & Víctor Homar & Philippe Drobinski, 2020. "Predictable and Unpredictable Climate Variability Impacts on Optimal Renewable Energy Mixes: The Example of Spain," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-25, October.
    13. Lee, Amy H.I. & Chen, Hsing Hung & Kang, He-Yau, 2011. "A model to analyze strategic products for photovoltaic silicon thin-film solar cell power industry," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 1271-1283, February.
    14. Branker, K. & Pathak, M.J.M. & Pearce, J.M., 2011. "A review of solar photovoltaic levelized cost of electricity," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 15(9), pages 4470-4482.
    15. Wu, Yunyang & Reedman, Luke J. & Barrett, Mark A. & Spataru, Catalina, 2018. "Comparison of CST with different hours of storage in the Australian National Electricity Market," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 487-496.
    16. Peters, Michael & Schmidt, Tobias S. & Wiederkehr, David & Schneider, Malte, 2011. "Shedding light on solar technologies'A techno-economic assessment and its policy implications," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 6422-6439, October.
    17. Rathore, Pushpendra Kumar Singh & Rathore, Shailendra & Pratap Singh, Rudra & Agnihotri, Sugandha, 2018. "Solar power utility sector in india: Challenges and opportunities," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P2), pages 2703-2713.
    18. Malagueta, Diego & Szklo, Alexandre & Borba, Bruno Soares Moreira Cesar & Soria, Rafael & Aragão, Raymundo & Schaeffer, Roberto & Dutra, Ricardo, 2013. "Assessing incentive policies for integrating centralized solar power generation in the Brazilian electric power system," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 198-212.
    19. Lloyd, Bob & Forest, Andrew S., 2010. "The transition to renewables: Can PV provide an answer to the peak oil and climate change challenges?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 7378-7394, November.
    20. John Foster & Liam Wagner & Phil Wild & Junhua Zhao & Lucas Skoofa & Craig Froome & Ariel Liebman, 2011. "Market and Economic Modelling of the Intelligent Grid: End of Year Report 2010," Energy Economics and Management Group Working Papers 10, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Biomass Efficiency Energy;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:4:p:1672-1674. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.