Dendro power, scope for employment

by Shirajiv SIRIMANE

Dendro power projects have the largest scope for providing employment to the rural communities and give the highest social benefit. Unlike most of the other renewable energy technologies biomass can be stored and hence it is dispatchable, said Minister of Power and Energy, Champika Ranawaka at the Delhi International Renewable Energy Conference (DIREC) in India.

The key benefit of the Dendro power is that it can replace emitting fossil carbon to the atmosphere with bio carbon. It is carbon neutral.

Minister Ranawaka stressed the need for improving renewable energy as a form of mainstream energy. In this connection he said that considerable amounts of Sri Lanka's energy are from renewable sources. Sri Lanka's emission levels are far below the world average. He said that even though there is good potential for expanding wind power in Sri Lanka, due to technical difficulties Sri Lanka is facing problems of dispatching such renewable energy. Therefore, the issues of storage and dispatch of specially solar and wind energy have to be addressed. At the moment Sri Lanka is focusing as a priority on Biomass-based energy such as Dendro Power.

Certain trials conducted in Sri Lanka have shown that multi cropping energy plantations with existing commercial plantations yield multiple benefits. For example, the ability of the soil to retain moisture content is enhanced by approximately 50% when Gliricidia is grown as a multi-crop under coconut plantations. Gliricidia multi-cropping improves the organic matter content of soil by 40% at a depth of 15cm. Besides, 50 kgs of processed Gliricidia leaves have the ability to reduce annual chemical fertiliser requirements, yielding the equivalent of 0.8 kg Urea, 0.25 kg Phosphate, 0.6 kg Muriate of Potash and 0.5 kg Dolomite. Further Solar radiation utilisation on a coconut plantation is increased from 6% to 94% in the presence of Gliricidia.

Renewable energy

In 2007, per capita carbon emissions (M tons) in Sri Lanka stood at 0.6 while India 1.4, China 4.9, Singapore 7.1, Germany 9.6, Japan 9.8, and US 18.9. While we are yet to exhaust our full carbon quota we in Sri Lanka are quite determined to develop our renewable energy sources and technologies.

Though it is heartening to note the progressive renewable energy policies of the countries like the United States which had also displayed a keen interest in developing modern biomass infrastructure we insist that the developed world should commit themselves to the binding target of reaching 40% emission reduction by 2020 and 80% by 2050.

In Sri Lanka even today around 47% of the total energy is generated by the use of biomass in the form of fuel wood. 'Traditional biomass' consumption in Sri Lanka has increased from 3,310 tons in 1980 to 4,720 by 2007. However, the biomass percentage in the primary energy supply has dropped from 68% to 47% during the same period.

Ministry of Power and Energy conducted a long-term electricity generation Expansion Planning study to figure out the status of different generation options. The candidate options considered for this study included oil, coal, LNG, hydro, nuclear and Dendro. Contrary to the popular belief that the renewable energy technologies are generally expensive, the study revealed that the Dendro power is the most cost effective power generation option. We internalised the external costs and benefits of each technology while doing the analysis.

The factors we considered for the study included the difference between the imported and indigenous fuels, carbon trading possibility and the future price hikes of fossil fuel.

There are large extents of uncultivated, less productive lands in Sri Lanka and they offer an ideal opportunity for large scale energy plantations. It is about 1,700,000 hectares excluding reserved land such as natural forests, national parks and other specified areas. Though this may look like a limited space from an Indian perspective, it is quite sufficient to cater to at least part of the energy needs of a 20 million population if maximum use is made.

Biomass mainstay

Biomass has always been the mainstay of our energy supply from historical times and remains so even to this day. Year round availability of sunshine and adequate rainfall has resulted in Sri Lanka possessing a long tradition and culture for sustainable plantations.

The expansion of plantation technology for energy production, fortunately, is in total harmony with this tradition and culture. We have realisd its value as the means of meeting modern energy demands such as thermal energy for industries and also for electricity generation. We are quite convinced that distributed cogeneration Dendro plants are the ideal solution for energy challenges and plans are also under way to convert our coal power plants to co-firing power plants, in order to achieve zero carbon emission growth by 2020.

Sri Lanka has already established private, public and civil society partnerships aimed at meeting our energy requirements. Farmers engaged in the traditional rice cultivation in the dry zone in Sri Lanka have employment opportunity only during the peak labour periods of certain months of the year. These farmers who long for alternative income generating avenues in the remaining months will engage in the energy plantations which will in turn help them to boost their food production.

Depletion of fossil fuel reserves will have a dual impact on our country: In addition to triggering an energy crisis, it will also affect the agriculture sector as cost of fossil fuels and fossil based fertiliser will continue to increase. Sri Lanka is currently providing a 95% subsidy for imported fossil nitrogen. However, this certainly is not an economically viable solution.

Avert crisis

"We strongly believe that the single most important solution to avert this crisis is development of Dendro power. We are fast moving to replace fossil carbon with bio Carbon and fossil nitrogen with bio nitrogen to ensure a truly sustainable Sri Lanka for the future generations."

"While man may have excelled in many sciences including rocket science, it is man's primary vocation, agriculture - which was not considered prestigious of all sciences, that has finally come to the rescue of mankind in one of its darkest hours in civilisation."

The Delhi International Renewable Energy Conference has 'Up-scaling and Mainstreaming Renewable for Energy Security, Climate Change and Economic Development" as its theme.

The Minister was speaking at the event in India.