The NYT just picked up the story about 4 million in metro Atlanta with about 90 days of water left. One of the overlooked consequences to drought is the impact upon power generation. Coal, nuclear, and, yes, biomass gasification require water. Columbia, SC is in the drought region, though in less critical condition than Hot Lanta.

So, waterless energy production, read photo voltaic, still need more attention in a region of no renewable portfolio standards, either for Southern states or for the United States.

Also Nexterra’s uses clean wood residuals. No glue, no chemicals. So not only does the system have low pm emissions but there are no hazardous contaminants released from the stack.

Black Box theory first. Yes, theoretically, biomass to energy is “carbon-neutral”. If you ignore the energy/emissions associated with any cultivation / harvesting.

The bigger denial, and this is a generalization, is that coal is fed to the gasifier along with biomass. In some models, the biomass content is between 10-15%.

No biomass is necessary for gasification; and, coal gasification is very much other than carbon-neutral.

Now to relativity and beyond. A very good, investigative reporter type of question is whether incineration of biomass is better than gasification.

The first qualifier is what sort of biomass are we discussing: waste, i.e., agricultural, forestry, and /or municipal solid waste, or lignocellulosic crops.

Then there is the quality question, how good is the hot gas conditioning, since all methods and all feedstock produce emissions.

Then the why bother question, which is, if Syngas is swell and we are in a heck of a energy mess, then gosh, we just are going to have to use these handy gasifiers already in operation to burn coal, coal, coal.

Sorry for the unsightly spittle — rant mode off.