How India should address the challenge of utilizing biomass energy
How India should address the challenge of utilizing biomass energy – Ajay Shankar, TERI
Recent developments have created a window of opportunity for a smooth transformation in the use of bio energy in the country.
While India has achieved considerable success in developing wind and solar power, it’s bio energy resources are still being used in the pre-industrial mode. Women in rural India gather fuel wood for cooking. They collect cow dung and make cow dung cakes for cooking. The transition to technologically efficient ways of using this huge renewable source of energy has been overdue.
Cow dung generates methane gas which is far worse than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. The burning of cow dung cakes and fuel wood for cooking adversely affects the lungs and eyes of women and imposes a huge avoidable health cost. In addition, crop residues are burnt in the fields. All these are a major source of air pollution. North Indian cities are now among the most polluted in the world. The challenge of improving air quality alone calls for a major effort by the state for change.
The technology for converting cow dung to useful commercial energy has been in use in large dairy farms across the world. The useful energy goes up about three times with modern technology. Methane gas from cow dung can be captured and used for heating, cooking as well as for generating electricity. It can best be used for generating electricity. A few dairy farms are now doing this in India too. The very large gobar gas program for cooking in the villages of the late 1980s did not succeed.
The technologies for using wood and crop residues as a source of useful energy have also matured. Heating wood by restricting the flow of air converts it into charcoal. This can be used for generating heat for industrial uses or burnt along with coal in thermal power plants. Fuel wood and crop residues can also be gasified and the gas used to generate electricity as in gas-fired power plants. Many such mini plants have been successfully run in villages across India.
Recent developments have created a window of opportunity for a smooth transformation in the use of bio energy in the country. All villages have been electrified. Electrification of all households is expected to get completed in the next few years. The Ujjwala program is taking LPG gas connections to rural homes. Electricity can also be used for cooking. So, cow dung and firewood would gradually cease to be basic necessities. These can now be used in environmentally benign ways to get more useful energy.
The key to success would lie in putting in place a system for buying cow dung, firewood and crop residues in the village at an attractive and stable price. If a woman could get reasonable payment for the cow dung she has been collecting for cooking, it would be considerably easier for her to pay for the gas cylinder, or, the electricity that she may now start to use for cooking. The cow dung so purchased can generate electricity in mini plants which can be fed into the grid on payment.
A few pilot projects are required to discover the price at which cow dung could be purchased and the cost of putting up a mini plant in the village itself and running it. This would determine the viable cost of generating electricity. Based on this, the distribution company of the area then needs to announce the price, approved by the State Regulatory Commission, at which it would buy all the electricity from cow dung-based plants that come up over the next two years. With this, market forces would work to bring about a rapid transformation. Mini plantmanufacturers would emerge and so would agencies who would install these plants and provide maintenance back up. Innovative patterns of entrepreneurship and village level partnerships for land and labour would drive the process forward. With volumes, prices should also start coming down.
This electricity should be treated as a prescribed mandatory part of the Renewable Energy Purchase Obligation of the Distribution Companies.The higher cost would be accepted by the Regulatory Commissions in tariff determination as is being done for other renewable energy sources. As the total potential of such electricity generation is modest, the impact on tariff would be marginal.
A similar process would be required for briquettes or charcoal making mini plants using firewood and crop wastes to come up in the villages. A commitment to buy all the production at a viable price for the potential producer would be the key. Aggregators who would buy and supply these to power plants would emerge. Here, price discovery could be done by inviting bids for supply of a sufficiently large quantity for a few years from a prospective date. This price could be offered to all who agree to match the lowest bid price. Commitment to buy would be the key to creating the effective market signal for private investments. Prior approval of the Regulatory Commissions to accept this fuel cost in the tariff determination for the power plants would make this revenue neutral for the power plants, an essential condition.
In parallel, village level mini plants, which use fuel wood and crop residue to generate electricity through gasification, need to be also promoted through pre-announced feed-in tariffs, approved by the Regulatory Commission. In a few years, it would be clear which alternative, village level electricity generation through gasification or conversion into briquettes to be burnt along with coal in thermal plants, is cheaper. The cheaper option could then be used to fully use all the fuel wood and crop residues in villages.
Using the price mechanism in a smart way without putting pressure on the budgetary resources of government, the problem of air pollution from the burning of biomass can become a thing of the past, working rural women can have some additional cash income, and entrepreneurship along with jobs can be created across all of rural India. This is achievable by 2025.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETEnergyworld.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETEnergyworld.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.
About Ajay Shankar
Ajay Shankar is a Distinguished Fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). He has been a Joint Secretary and an Additional Secretary in Ministry of Power in the past. He was a member of the Indian Administrative Service which he joined in 1973 and retired as Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion in the Government of India in Dec 2009.
Source: energy.economictimes.indiatimes
