It can be burned to make steam and drive an electricity-generating turbine.

Mixed and burned with oil or coal, it will produce fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuels burned alone.

It can even be processed as a gas, for use in fuel cells.

It could also, as it is more widely adopted, revitalize the job markets and economies of small-town USA.

It has the potential to become the MVP of the alternative energy movement, and best of all, it is a renewable alternative energy produced in the crop fields, barnyards, forests, and even landfills, of America.

What is this alternative energy phenomenon?

It is biomass, the basis for biopower, which is second only to hydroelectric power as the United States’ largest source of renewable alternative energy electricity.

Biopower-producing biomass can contain a number of substances. Biomass may include any, or all, of: crop and forest product residues, animal waste, or fast-growing plants, like switchgrass, being cultivated solely for use in alternative energy production.

Biopower also includes the methane gas processed from the decaying organic materials in America’s landfills, sewage systems, barnyards, and feedlots.

By burning biomass for alternative energy before it even reaches the landfills to begin breaking down, the release of methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-one times the strength of carbon dioxide, is eliminated.

Central Vermont Public Service Utility sells alternative energy electricity created in farmyard anaerobic “digesters” which break down manure, releasing methane to power steam turbines. It expects to supply electricity to 1400 homes soon.

Washington State’s Department of Ecology estimates that the state already produces biomass sufficient to supply enough alternative energy electricity–15.5 billion kilowatt hours–to meet nearly half its residential needs.

And the biopower industry, because it is draws from so many sources, could possibly create jobs across the agricultural, forest products, and water and waste management sectors–many more than those available in the natural gas industry alone.

With consistent Federal tax credit, and state alternative energy incentive, policies, and a streamlined permit process, we may begin to experience the emergence of biopower as the renewable alternative energy superstar it could be.