Short rotation coppice willow as low carbon bioenergy farming

摘要

Bioenergy is not new. Before the invention of the steam engine and internal combustion engine society was dependent on horsepower of a different kind — the real horsepower. Horses needed biofuel in the form of oats and hay. In 1900 Britain's 3.5 million horses consumed the annual output of six million hectares, town horses alone consumed up to two million tons of oats and over three million tons of hay. Since the available land in Britain was only 26 million hectares, the only way that Britain could sustain its horse population in 1900 was by cheap imports, since the arable land was needed to feed its human population. In the United States, crops for horses took up 36 million hectares of arable land.