Abstract
Biomass – in form of nutritional energy and energy-rich material – is not accounted for in conventional energy statistics. It constitutes a neglected energy carrier although it has ever since provided the basis for human life and activity. In this work, we assess current global draw on the earth’s biomass resources by examining the indicators ‘Ecological Footprint’ and ‘Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production’, quantifying humankind’s biomass demand and the earth’s biomass supply. It is revealed that humankind appropriates about 20–30% of the ecosystem’s supplying capacity. Other definitions partly suggest lower and higher values. We then use the energetic metabolism accounting concept to acquire data on biomass supply for the past centuries to complement conventional energy statistics. It is disclosed that the actual energy supply to humankind is about twice as high as conventional energy statistics essentially suggest. Depending on the approach taken, current biomass supply amounts to 10–12 TW or to 14–15 TW. Against the results yielded, ideas like substituting fossil resources with biomass in the future for the provision of energy services to mitigate the current energy and climate crisis might be controversial to the achievement of sustainability.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
It should be noted here that carbon dioxide emissions are so far the only waste product included in national footprint accounts (Ewing et al. 2010:14).
- 3.
The term ‘metabolism’ refers to the functioning of living organisms, the internal (chemical and physical) processes of energy-rich material intake to enable sustenance and reproduction as well as output in form of entropy and waste (Ayres 1994:xi/3). Analogous to the biological notion, the socioeconomic metabolism approach examines these processes within certain human societies and between such societies and their natural environment.
- 4.
Pg C/yr. = 1015 g carbon per year. For better assessment of this chapter’s contents as well as on grounds of uniformity, all original units used in various studies are converted into the unit of power, namely Watt (W) (1 W = 1 J/s; TW = 1012 W). Conversions are undertaken using the following factor: 1 kg dry matter biomass equals 0.5 kg carbon or 18.5 MJ (Haberl et al. 2007b:6). All figures stipulated hereafter derive from exact conversions and are only as precise as the original data.
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- 7.
Again, other estimates on the agricultural societies’ biomass supply seem to validate this range (compare for instance Kumar and Ramakrishnan 1990:331–334).
- 8.
The higher limit of 3500 W also accounts for the biomass supply to more consumption-oriented societies, like Northern America, having a per capita biomass supply of ca. 3227 W (Krausmann et al. 2008:476–477).
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Beran, L., Dyckhoff, H. (2019). Global Biomass Supply and Sustainable Development. In: Behnassi, M., Gupta, H., Pollmann, O. (eds) Human and Environmental Security in the Era of Global Risks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92828-9_15
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