Talk:Bioenergy

Moving the section "carbon neutrality for forest biomass"?

I am contemplating moving the section "Carbon neutrality for forest biomass" to biomass (energy) for now and to consolidate/condense it with similar content there (before later deciding if biomass (energy) and bioenergy need to be merged together). I am thinking that the bioenergy article should become a high level overview article that does not go into a lot of detail for specific types of biomass/crops. But am not sure. EMsmile (talk) 09:27, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

I've moved this now. It will require further work at biomass (energy) and then also new content to be added to this article. EMsmile (talk) 08:58, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

What exactly is the factual accuracy dispute please?

Could someone explain in simple terms if there still is a dispute, or if not remove the tag please? Perhaps the "what" parameter of the tag could be filled in. Chidgk1 (talk) 14:20, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for this, Chidgk1. It would be good to continue work on this article. Pinging @User:Clayoquot as she's the one who added that tag if I remember right: What are the outstanding to-dos for this article now? It also needs to be seen in conjunction with biomass (energy) which is also in need of TLC. EMsmile (talk) 09:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi everyone. Sorry I took this article off my watchlist for a while so I only just noticed this question. I added this tag on January 21[1] with edit summary "Tagging as disputed for accuracy, see my latest comment on the talk page about failing to distinguish current reality from possible futures and about failing to convey that different plants are used for different forms of energy". It's been much improved since then, so I will remove the tag. I'll reply again later regarding further to-dos. Thanks for asking! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 02:34, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I suggest taking a look at the bar chart labelled "Bioenergy use by sector and share of modern bioenergy in total final consumption in the Net Zero Scenario, 2010-2030" here. You can see there that traditional use of biomass is very important in the world today, whereas it gets almost no weight currently in the bioenergy article. Also, liquid and gaseous biofuels are a relatively small part of overall bioenergy usage but are given a great deal of weight in the current article.

Bioenergy currently has two sections that describe production of liquid and gaseous biofuels: The "Input materials" section and the "Biofuel for transportation" section. These should be consolidated.

The section on applications should be either organized by bioenergy type or by sector, but not both. I can't think of any biofuel that is used exclusively for transport and isn't used in other sectors. Biogas, for example, can be used as a substitute for natural gas either in transport or in heating buildings. Biodiesel can be used as a substitute for diesel, which is used both in transport and for electricity production.

I recently found a very useful source, an IEA page on biofuels, that has some important facts about the maturity of advanced biofuels. 92% of biofuel today is made from crops that compete with food crops. The vast majority of the remaining 8% is made from used cooking oil and waste animal fats. As for using switchgrass, miscanthus, and bamboo to produce biofuels, see the section titled "Technologies that can convert woody feedstocks into biofuels need to be proven at scale in the next few years." We should make it clear that the reality of biofuels today is not the shiny technology of advanced biofuels. If advanced biofuels are mentioned at all, we should indicate that this not yet commercialized technology. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:34, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for these suggestions. I am glad you find it improved compared to the January 21st version. I hope someone takes this article under their wing! I feel ill-equipped to do it myself (due to lack of in-depth knowledge) but it's such an important topic. I'll put another question that I have into a separate section. EMsmile (talk) 06:56, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

OK. I'm going to tag this article as being unbalanced because of the massive overemphasis on nascent tech and the lack of coverage of traditional biomass. I agree it's a very important topic. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:08, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Potential merge with biomass (energy) or a re-focus

Hi all, as you know, I've been culling out content from biomass (energy) and from bioenergy. The culling is not yet fully complete (feel free to help if you can). But already now I am pondering if an earlier suggestion should be carried out or not and that was to merge the two articles together (probably under the final name of bioenergy). At this stage, I am undecided but I think I am leaning towards keeping them separate but reworking the bioenergy article so that it becomes focused on the technical workings of bioenergy production, e.g. more information on how the technology for such processes looks and how it works. How much MW they produce per input, design aspects, technical challenges and so forth. The other aspects around climate impacts would then be mainly (or only) at biomass (energy). What do you all think? Pinging our new collaborator User:InformationToKnowledge (who is impressing me with any article that they have worked on so far!). Pinging also some of the people who have commented previously, User:Chidgk1, User:Clayoquot, User:VQuakr, User:Lfstevens (Clayuquot: I am unsure if pinging you would cause you stress; you said you wanted to maybe remove these pages from your watchlist as it's overwhelming; so if the ping is unwelcome please accept my apologies and just ignore it :-) ) EMsmile (talk) 11:19, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

My default would be to combine the two. Specific energy of biomass feedstocks is intricately linked to their climate impact, so I don't see that being a natural separation point. VQuakr (talk) 17:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I did take Biomass and Bioenergy off my watchlists, but I'm always grateful to be pinged. I'll try to look into this in the next few days. Thanks for choosing to put effort into this topic area. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:00, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Sorry I doubt I will have time to think about these articles Chidgk1 (talk) 06:45, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

@User:VQuakr my thinking was more like this: biomass (energy) would be about which crops to grow, how to grow and harvest them, how to convert them for easier transport and so forth (however I am worried about some overlap with energy crop?). Then bioenergy would be about technical plants and processes to convert the material into heat and electricity. For example, there I would like to see information on large scale bioenergy production plants, their costs, design and operational issues, prevention of air pollution, waste products generated etc. A bit similar to the distinction between sewage and sewage treatment, or sewage sludge and sewage sludge treatment. I have no fixed views however, just pondering options, and pros and cons of keeping them separate versus merging together. EMsmile (talk) 10:14, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Bioenergy is an extremely broad topic that's important and interesting to a wide variety of people in their roles as citizens and consumers. It's also a complex topic, whose complexity (as well as the prefix "bio") makes it vulnerable to greenwashing. Many general sources on the topic are aimed at the general reader, not technical readers. All of those factors point to us making Bioenergy broad and aimed at a general reader, not narrowly focused on the technical workings of bioenergy production.

The technical workings of bioenergy production would be more suitable for articles that are focused on the specific types of bioenergy that are delivered to consumers and to industry. Technical workings of anything are not of interest to the general reader; they are of interest to professionals in the field.

Regarding the technical aspects of bioenergy production, what is of interest to the general reader is distinguishing current reality from future possibilities. E.g. the Bioenergy article should convey that bioethanol today is made by fermenting food crops (cereal grains, sugar cane, and sugar beets),[2] and that bioethanol tomorrow could perhaps be made through an advanced technology called cellulosic ethanol production. This advanced technology could one day allow materials such as corn stalks and miscanthus to be used to produce bioethanol at a reasonable cost. "Could" is a key word because decades of intensive investment in R&D on cellulosic ethanol have not yet brought the cost down enough to make it feasible. The reader doesn't need to know anything more about how fermentation or cellulosic ethanol production work technically, but they do need to understand the difference between what's actually happening and what might work someday. The current version of the Bioenergy article fails to do this.

As for the question of which crops to grow, this is a good question but the answer is, "It depends on what form of energy you want to get." The current version of the Bioenergy article fails to do this. If you want bioethanol, you cannot get it from wood, miscanthus, or waste (except in a possible future). If you want heat and electricity, these things will do. As for the "power surface density" concept, I have never seen this framing used in a general source on bioenergy except where Vaclav Smil uses it to demonstrate why he thinks bioenergy is generally a dumb idea.

There is no such thing as the design of "bioenergy production plants". The machinery used to produce bioethanol does not have a single thing in common with the machinery used to produce bioelectricity. One thing that we need is an article on producing electricity from biomass. This could be called Biopower plant or Electricity production from biomass or perhaps Electricity and heat production from modern biomass. Some of the content that has ended up in this article could be appropriate either there or in Pellet fuel. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:27, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for these inputs which I am trying to digest and decide what it means in practical terms for this suite of articles. I've just done a bit of work on the biofuel article as well. I think the articles biofuel, bioenergy, energy crops and biomass (energy) need to go hand in hand and fit together like a puzzle. At the moment it's all still quite a mess. They often don't even refer to each other, e.g. the article on biofuel made no mention of bioenergy until now (I've just added a link now).

I think initially, the use of hatnotes could be useful. I've started that now. Also, I don't think that the literature is as clear cut as we had worded it: it would be nice if biofuels was a term only used for liquid and gaseous transport fuels but this is not so. A book on clean energy by Letcher that Femke had recommended to me states on page 173 "Biofuels are biobased products, in solid, liquid, or gaseous forms. They are produced from crops or natural products, such as wood, or agricultural residues, such as molasses and bagasse." This to me reads exactly like our article on bioenergy. (the book is available through LibGen by the way). So how do we see the 4 articles fit together (or 3 articles if we ended up merging biomass and bioenergy)? EMsmile (talk) 11:17, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

The term "biofuel" is sometimes used to include liquids/gases/solids used in a modern way and is sometimes used to include liquids/gases only. It never - unless the author is being careless - refers to traditional use of biomass. There is also a lot of solid biomass used in modern industry that probably isn't normally classified as biofuel because it's unrefined - e.g. taking sawdust and burning it to boil water in a paper mill kind of thing. It would probably make sense to split the Biofuel article into Liquid and gaseous biofuels and Modern solid biofuel or perhaps Modern solid bioenergy because often when sources talk about the issues around biofuels, they do not mean solids at all. Good luck digesting this stuff, I'm glad you're trying :) Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:22, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

I've done a bit of editing work on the biofuel article. Should I perhaps copy your suggestion to the talk page there? However, I find the biofuel article is already quite short, so splitting off Liquid and gaseous biofuels might make it too short. Unless we think the biofuel article should become a high level overview article, a bit similar to biomass, so almost like a disambiguation article but not. EMsmile (talk) 09:23, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

Apologies, I struck part of my comment as I'm realizing it's probably not a good idea. My impression - which could use more systematic checking - is that in the vast majority of cases the term "biofuel" refers to liquids and gases only. Probably Biofuel should be only about liquids and gases with a hatnote saying "This article is about liquid and gaseous fuels. For solid biomass fuels, see Solid fuel." And perhaps instead of Solid fuel there could be better targets such as Pellet fuel or Modern solid biofuel. I'm not sure. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 15:20, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Currently the hatnote at biofuel says "This article is about mainly liquid or gaseous fuels used for transport. For other applications, see bioenergy. I think this is OK for now? I wouldn't link to pellet fuel as that is mainly just wood pellets currently. "Modern solid biofuel" is not a well established term yet and the term "modern" is also a bit arbitrary in time. Maybe "advanced solid biofuel" would be better. I haven't seen these terms much in the literature yet but will keep my eyes open.

In any case, the more I read about this topic, the more often I see "biofuel" used in a synonymous way with "biomass (energy)" or bioenergy. It feels each author uses whatever they want... But if we can determine a clear trend, that would be good. It would be great if biofuel was only used for liquid or gaseous fuels used for transport applications. We could try to encourage use in that way through our Wikipedia articles but I am not yet sure how common the different usage types are. (might also depend on the region, perhaps US is different to Europe and Asia) EMsmile (talk) 16:20, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

@EMsmile: we could move biofuel to Fluid biofuel if we wanted to disambiguate it better. VQuakr (talk) 17:00, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm, interesting idea. But is anyone using the term "fluid biofuel"? And then it would mean that biofuel would become a short main page, a bit like biomass? It would say: "Biofuel has several meanings, xxx and xxx... "? EMsmile (talk) 17:04, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

It's not a novel term, but I haven't made a concerted effort to quantify how common it is. How many articles would there be in the biofuel disambig? If just two (fluid biofuel and wherever we discuss pellet fuel), we could resolve with a redirect and hatnotes. VQuakr (talk) 17:12, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

"Modern solid bioenergy" is a category the IEA uses.[3] The distinction between modern and traditional uses of energy is common and not controversial. We would do well to use categories that well-established sources like the IEA use for statistics on energy usage. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:16, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

I am undecided about it all. Today I had a look at fuel. It clearly says fuel can be solid, liquid or gaseous. So I guess the same should apply to biofuel. By the way, the fuel article needs updating in the section on "biofuel". Wondering if an excerpt would be best for that. What do you think?

Comparison with German Wikipedia for inspiration

• I had a look at the German Wikipedia for inspiration (it tends to be very good for climate change articles; use Google translate to bring it back to English). In the German Wikipedia there is one article on biomass which is a mixture of our two biomass and biomass (energy) articles but of course not going into as much depth for the energy part. It then has a section on "uses of biomass" which then branches off to the bioenergy article.
• I also checked how the German Wikipedia deals with the biofuel topic. In the German language the term "fuel" is "Brennstoff" (literature meaning: stuff that can burn). It splits it into solid stuff that can burn, liquid stuff that can burn, gaseous stuff that can burn. In the group of "liquid stuff that can burn" they have "Biokraftstoffe" which then links to the English Wikipedia article "biofuel". The lead of the German Wikipedia biofuel article says "Biofuel (also biofuel , agrofuel or agricultural fuel ) is fuel that is produced from biomass , i.e. a form of application of bioenergy . Biofuels are mostly liquid, sometimes gaseous, and are used to power internal combustion engines in mobile and stationary applications. Starting materials for biofuels are renewable raw materials such as oil plants , grain , sugar beet or sugar cane , forest and residual wood , woodFast-growing plantations , special energy crops and animal waste.  The prefix Bio does not indicate an origin from ecological agriculture , but the plant ( biological ) origin. The climate neutrality and ecological advantages of biofuels are controversial." EMsmile (talk) 10:06, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

  I would really rather prefer that we use a methodology that is based on looking at reliable English-language sources. There are tons of them on this topic. We just have to use them. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:20, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, yes that would be good. But why not also be inspired by the structure of a good Wikipedia article that happens to be in the German Wikipedia? The different language Wikipedias tend to work in "silos" which is silly when it comes to global topics like bioenergy / climate change. I like the structure and level of detail (not too detailed) for the German Wikipedia article on bioenergy which is like this (translated):

1 Extraction of biogenic fuels
2 Categories of biogenic fuels
2.1 Biogenic solid fuels
2.2 Biogenic liquid fuels
2.3 Biogenic fuel gases
3 use of bioenergy
3.1 Biogenic heat and power generation
3.2 biofuels
4 potential and space requirements
4.1 Worldwide
4.2 Europe
4.3 Germany
5 importance in Germany
5.1 share of the energy supply
5.2 Promotion of biogenic fuels
6 Assessment of bioenergies
6.1 advantages
6.2 Disadvantages
7 Legal sustainability criteria
8 Bioenergies perspective

Also, their "biomass" article has the following structure, compared to our biomass article which is only a short overview now (on purpose) and compared to our biomass (energy) article which is only about energy biomass:

1 Terminology
1.1 Ecological term "biomass"
1.2 Energy technology biomass term
2 types of biomass
2.1 criteria
2.2 living biomass
2.3 dead biomass
3 composition of biomass
4 amounts
4.1 Quantities according to the ecological biomass concept
4.2 Quantities according to the energy-technical biomass term
5 biomass use
5.1 advantages
5.2 Disadvantages
5.3 Biomass use in Germany

EMsmile (talk) 08:54, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Overall, I wish I had more expertise and time available right now to work on this further. It's a fascinating topic but I struggle to make enough time for it at the moment. EMsmile (talk) 08:54, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Relationship of this article with biofuel article

Hi Clayoquot, I have a follow-up question to you (sorry if it's a daft question): how do you see this article interlink with the biofuel article? Should bioenergy be regarded as the parent article or are they on the same level? Looking at the two articles now, do you think they fit well together or is there content that ought to be moved from one to the other, or that should be condensed in one but expanded in the other? I've tried to figure it out but got rather confused. EMsmile (talk) 06:58, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I think they should each be an article as they are now. As for condensing, moving, and expanding content, this requires a level of knowledge that is higher than the level of knowledge required to do the changes that I suggested yesterday. Since you said you don't have that enough knowledge to make those changes to a single article, I don't think you should be making any changes yet to how articles fit together. Figuring out how multiple articles fit together is a more advanced task than getting a single article right. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 19:18, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I am not planning to tackle these two articles in depth at all but I think someone should. If you, or anyone else watching this page, doesn't have time or inclination at this stage it would still help if you (or someone else) could put on the talk page (here or at biofuel talk page?) how you see the two articles fitting together, so that someone else in future already has some guidance to start with. (if you don't have time, I understand of course)

I didn't suggest that the two articles should be merged. I just wondered what their hierarchy should be (if there should be one), i.e. is bioenergy the more overarching one and biofuel is the sub-article? Or is neither the sub-article of the other? Interestingly, biofuel has far higher pageviews than bioenergy, see here. I wonder if this could be related to the relevance the term biofuel has in the United States. EMsmile (talk) 19:56, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

I am not sure if I understand your questions, but if/when someone tackles these articles in depth, we can deal with the questions they have at that point. Someone who understands the topic area in sufficient depth to tackle it will already know whether bioenergy or biofuel is the parent topic. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 21:27, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

At an impasse

To sum up, there is disagreement whether the Bioenergy page should be merged with the Biomass (energy) page (an endless debate it seems), and about what kind of article it should be, if it is not merged. VQuakr argues basically that yield/energy content, energy production and climate effects are intimately connected so discussion about these should not be split up. EMsmile originally wanted to create a tech-focused article specifically about the end use of biomass, namely energy production, while Clayoquot wants a page more directed at the general public, and with a clearer distinction between traditional and modern bioenergy. I agree with all of these suggestions, which is unhelpful of course. But I lean toward a merge (written for a general public and with clearer distinction between traditional and modern) because it is confusing to the reader to be presented with multiple pages. As you all know, I think a longer article is justified in this case. The Perennial Hugger (talk) 19:04, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

We are indeed a bit "stuck" on this point, and not moving forward, but I don't think just making it "longer" is the right solution. I've said the same also at Talk:biomass (energy). I think we have to find more editors who have time for this topic and then reach a consensus regarding which content is best located at biomass (energy) and which at bioenergy, and if there would be any rationale for merging them. I think in general readers are better served with shorter articles even if there is overlap. I compare it to carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions: The two topics overlap but look at the same thing from different angles, thus warranting two separate articles.

An opposing example would be carbon offsets and credits which was recently merged into one despite the two concepts being a bit different. But there was so much overlap between the two that the decision was to merge. If we took an analogue approach we could create bioenergy from biomass. But at this stage I would lean towards keeping them separate. EMsmile (talk) 06:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I have been steering clear of this debate for some time. It seems that some walls are just too hard to ban one's head against. However, there does seem to be a logical solution. Bioenergy appears to be the top level topic in which not only should there be an outline of the main physical components , (biomass, biofuel and Biogas ) perhaps by use of excerpts from the topic articles , but also the socio-political debate about crops grown for fuel and all that that entails. This would enable some relatively well separated articles on Biomass, Biofuel and Biogas. I will have another look at Biogas sometime when a bludgeoning IP has worn out their vocabulary.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   14:09, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

@Velella, I'm so happy to see your name here. if you could work on things along those lines that would be great! Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 16:57, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Clayoquot - much appreciated comments. I am travelling at present but as soon as I get settled back at home, I will have a go at some re-structuring. Regards.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   11:08, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Proposed re-structuring

Sufficient time has passed since the last exchange and I am now proposing to start revising the key articles along the lines suggested. This may take a while so contributors patience would be appreciated. My plan is to ensure that the ledes of all the key articles properly summarise their (expected) contents so that they may be used as excerpts in this article which will provide the high level overview. After that, re-structuring will be by moving content between articles and eliminating duplication. As always, the contributions of others would be more than welcome. Keeping necessary discussions on this page may assist to keep progress focussed. Regards  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   11:36, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I am now convinced that the Biomass article must be retained as a sort of disambiguation page with explanations but kept short with most content on the relevant linked articles. I remain convinced that Bioenergy should be the top level article which sets out the scope and breadth of the topic. I have re-read, with some trepidation, the discussions above. With the best will in the world, I cannot try and integrate the German article structure into the English Wikipedia particularly as an early stumbling block would be the different treatments of Biomass as a topic. Please bear with me, I am still wading through both article content and references on all the related articles - this may take a while.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   20:37, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

That sounds wonderful. I agree with your comments and I'm glad you're taking a slow and comprehensive approach. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:38, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi User:Velella, I am also happy to see you here. Working with you is always a pleasure! I agree that the Biomass article works quite well as it is (disambiguation page). Do you already have a clear idea in your head what the biomass (energy) article should become? Are you saying it will become a sub-article below bioenergy? How would you organise the split of content (if you already know). - You are not finding the way how it's split in the Germany Wikipedia useful for inspiration? (I didn't understand what you meant with I cannot try and integrate the German article structure into the English Wikipedia particularly as an early stumbling block would be the different treatments of Biomass as a topic..) If you need more time before answering this, not problem. No rush. EMsmile (talk) 16:18, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

EMsmile - many thanks for your comments. I have spent considerable time reading and re-reading all the relevant articles and marvelling at the density of some of the prose! To get this right will take some time which is why I tried not to discourage other participants. I am currently applying the systems analysis approach to try and work out the best logical solution and the most relevant division of text between article. I have therefore restricted myself to very small mostly cosmetic changes. My other major concern is to keep the several, very committed contributing editors on board. So, yes, it will take time! Regards  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   11:57, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I was just wondering if you still have this on your to-do list, Velella? EMsmile (talk) 10:13, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Many apologies for the very long delay, but yes, I do still have this on my to-do list. I have been away in New Zealand for three months and, coupled with two long bouts of ill health, my schedules have been greatly disrupted. But please don't hold back on my behalf, but I will hopefully start meaningful revisions in the next couple of weeks. Regards  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   11:57, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello Vellela, glad to hear you're back and sorry to hear about your illnesses! I came here today to do some quick readability improvements to the lead. I decided to also add some info about the definitions of terms by using the glossary of IPCC AR6 WG3. I think that is useful. However, it's not overly elegant how we have content about terminology spread over three articles: this one, biomass (energy) and biofuel. Perhaps it could be centralised in one location and then brought to the other two articles with an excerpt; not sure.

Also, I still ponder if the split into two articles (biomass (energy) and bioenergy) really works or if it would be easier to handle both topics in one combined article. Well, we had a really long discussion about that around two years ago. Perhaps two articles are better than one. But we have to be very careful that the content about environmental impacts of biomass production is not duplicated too much. Currently, the article on bioenergy seems too short to me, and the one on biomass (energy) too long and detailed (in comparison). EMsmile (talk) 23:49, 8 March 2024 (UTC)