What is it?
 |
| A biomass energy plant (p. 48) |
Questions
- Based on the arguments in the text, do you think it is a good or bad idea that more and more biomass energy plants are being built?
- Can you address their arguments well enough to persuade people on the opposing side to change their minds and agree with you on this controversial issue?
- What should a company proposing a new biomass power plant have to prove before they are allowed to build it?
You have 15:00 minutes to plan and write a response to the two questions. I suggest you divide your time roughly as:
- planning = 3:00 minutes (It's usually a good idea to plan before you start to write.)
- writing = 9:00 minutes, and
- editing = 3:00 minutes.
A helpful strategy
Imagine you are writing for someone who has not read the question you are answering or the article that the question follows up. Your aim is to clearly communicate your response to that reader, so it might help to paraphrase the question at the start of your response to it. But you need to rewrite (paraphrase) the idea in the question as a statement.
Because your writing should make sense independently of the question it might be answering, it is usually useful to give background, which can often be done by paraphrasing the question into statements that begin your answer. This is also a useful strategy in exams such as IELTS and TOEFL.
Reference
- Warwick, L. & Rogers, L. (2018). Skillful 4: Reading & Writing, Student's Book Pack (2nd. ed.). London: Macmillan Education
Although there are arguments against building more biomass energy plants, I think that the benefits outweigh the possible harms, which can largely be controlled. First, I'm not sure how strong the argument that cutting down forest must release carbon into the atmosphere except temporarily. The initial carbon captured will largely be recaptured by the replacement crop, even though that takes time. But over a period of decades, it should balance out. The more worrying objection to building more plants to generate renewable energy from biomass is the effect on food prices, but again, I'm not sure that this is an insurmountable harm in biomass energy production. In fact, this might be a good opportunity to move more humans out of the small farming sector into other work in society. Large farms run with modern techniques are far more energy efficient and can produce quality food far more economically than small farmers can, which is the reason that food is now so abundant and relatively cheap in developed countries. It would certainly be very disruptive to move millions of poor farmers into other occupations, but the long term benefits for themselves and society are worth making that effort, a consequence of which will help to alleviate the lack of food for the poorest people that the article cites as a reason for opposing biomass as energy source.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if biomass plants are to be built, they should be required to present a proposal that demonstrates how they will achieve carbon neutrality, and if they fail to follow that proposal, they should be subject to substantial fines and perhaps closure for violating the terms under which they were granted a right to operate.
Actually, I'm opposed to biomass plants being built, but I guessed that might be the popular opinion, and wanted to disagree. Although I disagree with what I've just posted, that's not a good reason for you to agree with my disagreement with myself.
DeleteAlthough some people support biomass as it is a renewable energy resource, I do not support building many biomass energy plants, as they do more harm than good. First, building many biomass plants means destroying the environment. According to the reading passage 1, we need to cut down larger amount of trees to build and use biomass. As we know trees act like the lung of the earth which help absorbing and reducing Co2 in the air and they also produce O2 into the air for us.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I think we shouldn’t build more biomass energy plants. It has many bad effects from the text such as the energy crops can make the pollution of water and soil from pest control and it need to cut a lot of tree in large scale to do the production of it which means it increase the greenhouse gas, it causes the global warming. Moreover, it affects the people because the energy crops are more profitable, so the farmers will want to plant they more then the food crops will decrease in number and the price will be higher and living costs of people will be higher too.
ReplyDeleteIf we are not use more biomass, we are still having the other alternative fuels such as solar, wind or hydro and these kinds of energy will not be in bad effects compere to biomass.
I disagree with your comments on the part saying that a lot of trees need to be cut in large quantities to generate electricity. This means that it will increase greenhouse gases.
DeleteIt is because our country has a lot of plant residues derived from agricultural product processing. So I think it's still not the point of having to cut the perfect trees for fuel.
In addition, if it is said that biomass power plants then increase the amount of greenhouse gases. I think there is a lot of work out there in our world that makes greenhouse gases even more common than this.
Biomass, it is a raw material from agricultural waste residues or may be various fragments obtained from industrial production processes. The residues or residues that are most often used such as rice husk, rice straw, bagasse, animal dung, coconut shells, palm shells, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe biomass power plant is a type of power plant that generates electricity that produces steam from the biomass feedstock.
The raw materials used in these production can be either the same material or several it can be mixed together. The principle of operation is not at all different from conventional thermal power plants.
Therefore, biomass power plants have the advantage of being relatively cheap fuel. This is because the raw materials used are materials from the residue or residue of agricultural work, enabling electricity at low cost.
Especially in Thailand, which is a country that focuses on agriculture, it is considered to stimulate the Thai economy to grow even more as it can use the rest of agricultural produce to generate electricity.
As well as reducing the amount of waste, which is a very worthwhile use of the resources available on the planet.
Since biomass power plants have to rely on agricultural waste. Therefore, before the power plant is built, it is necessary to prove that the plant can handle the amount of waste gas coming out of the plant as well as pollutants such as dust, ash, gases that cause greenhouse conditions.
In addition, the plant must demonstrate the technology used in the combustion engine that will cause the smell to disturb nearby communities or not. Moreover, biomass fuel that has moisture may cause incomplete combustion and generate carbon monoxide gas. The factory needs to clarify these issues.
According to your comment, I agree with these advantages but I think growing energy crops more and more will affect the food chain if farmers only grow energy crops for sending to factories or companies. We should also look for other alternative energies such as wind and solar. For using something too much we probably have some effects as we learned from using fossil fuels too much.
DeleteThank you for your comments. However, I am still unsure that building more and more biomass is a good idea. First, according to the reading article, it doesn't tell us how many biomass plants should be built to supply enough electricity for a country. Can such renewable energy plants supply 100% of demand in electricity for a country? If so, how many biomass plants that should be built?
DeleteI think it is a bad idea. I agree that making energy from energy plants is a good idea but it should be controlled by the government. Without controlling, companies or farmers will extend the areas of making energy crops with no limit. When we always grow the same plants on the land, it affects the nutrients on the land. The land might have less nutrients. And energy crops required large-scale deforestation. I think we have enough energy crops. We should also look for alternative energy. If we only focus on the energy crops, we would face problems later if the product is too much.
ReplyDeleteBased on the arguments of the oldest energy source, I think it is a good idea to use biomass as energy sources. There are several reasons why biomass energy should be built. First, biomass is any organic, decomposable matter coming from agricultural waste or liquid fuels. These matters come from our lives every day and they are waste that we want to eliminate. Therefore, transforming them to be a form of heat and energy helps us get rid out of them and also produce more renewable energy to use in our daily live. Another reason is it is renewable energy. It can replace our non-renewable energy of fossil fuels, which are polluted and also provides us energy that is cleaner and more eco-friendly.
ReplyDeleteI agree with these advantages of biomass but we also have the other way to replace, reduce or to stop using fossil fuels. And biomass can cause the negative effects to the people and natural for example the farmers have to cut trees to build biomass production and when the farmers who plant food crops decrease, the price of food crops will be higher which is bad for the people. Anyway, reading your comment make me know more about the pros of biomass.
Delete