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3 points

Biomass can in theory work fine, since the process of making the fuel (growing plants) removes carbon from the atmosphere. Unless you use fossil fuels in the process of making and moving it, it should be close to carbon neutral

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3 points

If you’re okay with using forests for carbon capture, then you can just bury the wood underground. There is no justification for setting the wood on fire to generate electricity.

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1 point

Well the justification is that we need to generate electricity for a number of other reasons. I’m not suggesting that biomass is better than wind or solar, but if there are other reasons that those don’t suit the needs of a specific situation then biomass can make sense since it can be carbon neutral. It is, of course, important to make sure that it actually is that

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0 points

That justification holds for coal just as much as it does for the act of throwing the biofuel into the power plant. Why is it irresponsible to burn trees that died 400 million years ago but okay to burn trees that died 6 months ago?

Whether you’ve “offset the emissions” of burning the trees by growing them yourself doesn’t matter for the decision of burning the biofuel. You might as well call coal burning carbon neutral if you bury some trees underground in the place you mined the coal.

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