Enviva Considers Biomass Role In Hydrogen Economy

With the start of 2021 comes a new U.S. administration and the U.K.’s official departure from the EU, while the implementation of the EU Green Deal and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic carries over from 2020. Executives at Enviva, the world’s largest producer of industrial wood pellets, recently pooled their predictions and insights on energy trends, markets and policies and one of their observations of note is that biomass will assist the development and deployment of a hydrogen economy. More specifically, they say, is the use biomass directly to create hydrogen through gasification and thereby avoid carbon emissions that are associated with natural gas. Even further down the road, when surplus solar and wind could potentially be used to create hydrogen at scale, there will be an exciting opportunity to produce aviation and other fuels with carbon capture of biomass that could result in even fewer net greenhouse gas emissions. Likewise, as decarbonization efforts in the steel and cement industry rapidly increase, they too will look to bioenergy solutions for support.

The next issue of Wood Bioenergy magazine will delve further into Enviva’s insights.