Biomass: Impact on nature

Renewable only if it regrows, and costly in land

What this tab covers What taking energy from this source does to land, water, air and climate, wildlife and ecosystems, with life-cycle emissions and land use where measured.

Bioenergy is renewable only if the biomass regrows; it needs far more land and water per unit of energy than any other source, and traditional burning causes severe indoor air pollution.

Life-cycle emissions 230 g CO2e/kWh⁹ Dedicated biomass power, life-cycle median (range 130-420), IPCC AR5 Annex III Table A.III.2. The values include biogenic CO2 and albedo effects but not land-use change, which can dominate. Land use 58,000 ha per TWh per year for dedicated biomass (about 580 m2/MWh); residue biomass about 130¹⁰

Effects on nature

Area	Effect	Size	How it is reduced
Land	Dedicated energy crops and forests occupy very large areas and compete with food and habitat; residues need little extra land.¹⁰	Median 58,000 ha per TWh/yr for dedicated biomass power, the highest of all sources; residue biomass about 130	Use residues and wastes; avoid conversion of forests and grassland
Water	Growing biomass consumes rain and irrigation water.¹¹	24-143 m3 per GJ (Netherlands to Zimbabwe) vs 0.11 for natural gas; 70-400 times other carriers except hydro	Rain-fed residues, high-yield regions
Air and health	Burning wood, dung, charcoal and crop waste in open fires and simple stoves fills homes with smoke.¹²	About 3.2 million premature deaths a year; about 2.1 billion people rely on polluting fuels	Clean cookstoves, LPG, electricity, biogas
Climate	Combustion releases CO2 that regrowth must recapture; harvesting standing stocks creates a carbon debt, and land-use change can make emissions exceed fossil fuels.⁹	Life-cycle 130-420 g CO2e/kWh for dedicated biomass power, excluding land-use change	Sustainable forestry certification, residues, carbon capture
Ecosystems	Raising bioenergy to its upper potential would require far more harvesting, at the expense of wild ecosystems.⁴	About 250 EJ would need roughly double today's global biomass harvest	Keep bioenergy within about 80 EJ/yr sustainable potential

The carbon in biomass came from the air, so in principle burning it and regrowing it is close to carbon neutral. In practice the balance depends on what would have happened to the land and the biomass otherwise, on how long regrowth takes, and on fuel used in farming and transport. The IPCC range of 130-420 g CO2e/kWh for dedicated biomass power leaves out land-use change, which can dominate.

The other costs are spatial. Because plant growth delivers only about half a watt per square metre, biomass power uses roughly 30 times more land per unit of electricity than ground-mounted solar in the Lovering et al. survey (58,000 vs 2,000 ha per TWh/yr), and its water footprint is 70-400 times that of fossil and nuclear fuels. For the poorest households the most urgent impact is smoke: indoor burning of solid fuels is among the largest environmental causes of death.

Sources

Bioenergy: how much can we expect for 2050? (Haberl et al., Environmental Research Letters 8, 031004) IOP Publishing, 2013
Climate Change 2014: Mitigation, Annex III Technology-specific Cost and Performance Parameters, Table A.III.2 IPCC (AR5 WGIII), 2014
Land-use intensity of electricity production and tomorrow's energy landscape (Lovering, Swain, Blomqvist and Hernandez, PLOS ONE 17(7): e0270155) PLOS (open-access copy, eScholarship, University of California), 2022
The water footprint of bioenergy and other primary energy carriers (Gerbens-Leenes, Hoekstra and van der Meer, Value of Water Research Report 29) UNESCO-IHE / University of Twente, 2008
Household air pollution: health risks World Health Organization, 2024