To reduce its contribution to atmospheric pollution, the European Union and France have made commitments. This has led to the banning of coal and fuel oil as primary energy sources for the Albioma and EDF power plants in La Reunion Island. Albioma has replaced coal with wood and EDF replaced fuel oil with vegetable oil. These primary energies are biomasses which are, according to the European Union, renewable energies.

Using biomass as fuel weakens a carbon sink

For the wood used in the Albioma power plants, it comes from so-called "sustainable" forests in North America, and will soon come from Australia. These are therefore trees that have been storing CO2 for decades and are in the prime of life that are cut down, then burned in a few minutes in the boiler of a power plant. They are replaced by young plants that have a much lower capacity to absorb CO2. It will take several decades to return to the same level of CO2 absorption capacity as before the logging.
The study “Low-latency carbon budget analysis reveals a significant decline in the terrestrial carbon sink in 2023” was conducted by researchers from universities in China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States.
The study data show an 86% increase in the growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere in 2023, while emissions of this greenhouse gas after fuel use increased by 0.6%. The explanation is a collapse in the CO2 absorption capacity of terrestrial carbon sinks, which are forests, cultivated or uncultivated green plants, and soils. This collapse is linked in particular to the drought in the Amazon and the gigantic forest fires that affected Canada last year.
As a result, CO2 accumulates more quickly in the atmosphere, which accelerates the strengthening of the greenhouse effect and the increase in the average temperature on the Earth’s surface.

Abundant renewable energies in La Reunion Island

Using biomass as a fuel to produce electricity constitutes a withdrawal from a carbon sink. Imagining replacing all the coal used with biomass taken from forests is a dead end. The little that remains of primary forest in Reunion Island reminds us of this. Deforestation has not only been caused by agriculture, but also by the use of biomass as fuel for cooking, processing agricultural products or steam engines.
Thermal power plants using imported biomass use a transitional primary energy, but is it comparable to the abundant renewable energies in Reunion? Sun, wind, ocean thermal energy, wave energy, geothermal energy... their use will be a source of jobs for the Reunionese who will then be able to produce all the energy they consume from La Reunion resources.

M.M.