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FEEDSTOCK FRIENDLY: India has a wide variety of agricultural residues available for bioenergy production including rice and cotton straw, coconut husks and bamboo waste.

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India's biomass gasification sector is growing by leaps and bounds, seemingly at all levels, and it's raising hope for the establishment of electricity in rural villages. 

Biopowering India

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William Strauss, president of FutureMetrics, produced this study to point out flaws in the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences' woody biomass carbon accounting method.  

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Figure 1: The biomass curve assumes a 30-year growing cycle with dedicated sustainable forests so that no new net CO2 is released by combustion for 30 years after biomass facilities that started in 2011.
The coal curve is business as usual.
The model

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Figure 2: The biomass curve assumes that the biomass used in 2011 is from sustainable forests that have already sequestered the CO2. 
The model assumes a 2.5 percent annual growth rate in demand.
Improved silviculture increasing yield per acre is ass

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Figure 3: The biomass curve assumes that the biomass used in 2011 is from sustainable forests that have already sequestered the CO2. 
The coal curve is business as usual.
The curves assume a 2.5 percent annual growth rate in demand.
Improved silvicul

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CARBON CONCLUSION: If biomass is harvested from existing forests that will be sustainably managed in the future, there is no carbon debt.  

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Wood-to-energy from sustainably managed forests can provide net-zero carbon emission or even positive carbon sequestration if the woody biomass stock is not depleted or grows over time.

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Biopowering India

How Manomet Got It Backwards: Challenging the “Debt-Then-Dividend” Axiom