We would need to burn 30% of all biomass generated in a year to feed our energy appetite (rough calculation)
Total Disclosure - This is a very rough calculation. This is for discussion purposes only. I probably won't win the nobel.
Total organically bound carbon biomass on Earth RIGHT NOW - 560 billion tonnes
Total organically bound carbon biomass generated each year - 100 billion tonnes
Energy Content of hardwood fire wood (one of the easiest biomasses to extract energy from) - 16.2 megajoules per kg
If yearly biomass generation were just hardwoods and we burned it for energy we would get - 1620 exajoules
Worldwide energy consumption for 2008 - 474 exajoules
If humans just got energy from biomasses through conventional extraction techniques, we would have to incinerate/chemically breakdown 30% of all living creatures that come into existence every year.
Just so we can have robot vacuum cleaners and silly bandz
ummm, excuse me...waiter...check please!
links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption
Posted Nov 3, 2010, 4:02 PM UTC