Have We Already Won the Renewables Revolution?

[kristopher]

12. Ummmmm....

From Sanchez pg 1:

Western North America contains biomass resources from forestry, wastes, agricultural residues and dedicated energy crops, although supply is limited by land and sustainability practices (Fig. 1)13 . In total, we identify 1.9 × 109 MMBtu (2,000 PJ) of economically recoverable bioenergy available annually from solid biomass by the year 2030, sufficient for ∼7–9% of modelled demand for electricity in 2050. Our estimates for availability in California are smaller than other studies, which tend to focus on ‘technical potential’ rather than ‘economically recoverable’ resources14,15. Although barriers to biomass recovery exist even for economically recoverable resources, we choose these resources as a reasonable approximationof biomass potential.