Reduction of CO2-emissions by using biomass in combustion and digestion plants

Climate protection is one of the main aims of environmental policy. One way to advance and push the progress is to reduce the use of fossil fuels for energy production through an increasing production of renewable and CO2-neutral energy for example through application of biomass. This paper sets the focus on biomass streams that can be used both thermal and biological for energy production like grass or energy crops. To calculate the potentials of decrease of CO2-emissions for treatment of biomass in either combustion or digestion plants some scenarios were set up with different assumptions regarding degree of efficiency of treatment plants which depends on size of plants and the treatment process itself. The energetic utilisation of the considered biomass streams is divided in different utilisation scenarios: combined heat and power generation (CHP) and heat generation or power generation only. Additionally four groups of plant sizes referring to electrical power (from 0.1 up to 10.0 MW) were taken into consideration. The calculations of potential savings of CO2-emission in both types of treatment scenarios lead to the result that in comparison to biological technologies thermal processes show a much higher utilisation of the energy content in biomass.