Published in ERW, 23 Jun 2015
Energy crops used as alternatives to fossil fuels can, in some cases, emit harmful levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), leading to increased fine particulate matter in the atmosphere and surface ozone. That’s the finding of US scientists, who suggest these emissions could be minimized by selecting different crops.
“I think that our paper highlights the need to think holistically as we consider the future of energy production in a post-fossil-fuel era,” said William Porter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Next-generation bioenergy production has been touted as an important piece of the future energy puzzle, and I think that there is some real value there. But our paper demonstrates the risks we face if we make those kinds of large-scale decisions without considering the full spectrum of potential impacts, in this case the impact of feedstock biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions.” […]
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