Smart energy projects and invaders

November 20, 2008

BY Rona Johnson

A couple of projects among the Tech Awards caught my eye because they address important global issues - development of third world countries, distributed power and invasive species. The Tech Awards announced winners in several categories including health and education along with renewable energy on Nov. 12 from among 329 nominations in 68 countries. See http://www.techawards.org/laureates/ for the whole list. I learned about the awards at a Web site I regularly visit, The Bioenergy Pact between Europe and Africa, which highlighted award winning projects impacting developing nations. http://biopact.com/2008/11/bioenergy-projects-win-big-environment.html

While we argue about "food vs fuel" here in the United States, we can overlook the impact that making electricity more available has. The Decentralised Energy Systems India is helping more than 100 villages build small-scale power plants in areas that lack electricity. DESI biomass gasification systems use agricultural waste streams to provide power that costs up to 20 times less than alternatives like solar power. Waste products from the conversion are returned to the soil. "When electricity arrives, poor villages are entirely transformed," the Biopact article says. "DESI's ‘magic' allows for the sudden revitalisation of rural communities: farmers succeed in pumping and selling irrigation water, small entrepreneurs make a business out of charging batteries for cell phones, making ice or creating village cinemas. Women get a break with electric mills making the backbreaking work of crushing farm products a thing of the past. More important services, like storing medicines in fridges or lighting up schools are made possible as well."

And something we don't hear of much in the United States, since we don't participate in the Kyoto Protocol: The DESI projects are registered as United Nations Clean Development Mechanism projects, receiving carbon credits and cash that helps to combat poverty.

Another project caught my eye because it's a solution to invasive species as well as energy. The Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia is turning an invasive plant into a clean biomass fuel. The invasive thorn acacia makes local agriculture, based on cattle grazing, impossible. Brush thinnings on the conservation fund's farm were chipped and compressed into briquettes as an alternative to firewood, coal and charcoal. Electrical generation is also being studied.

Bioenergy could be a solution for invasive species, but be forewarned that it will have to be done right. I just finished writing a story for Biodiesel Magazine that will appear in the January issue on work being done with the invasive Chinese tallow tree. One approach is to gather the woody biomass being chopped alongside highways and using a new microwave technology to extract the oil from the entire tree. The developer claims 38 percent oil is extracted which makes a good biodiesel. Another source I talked to for the story says he plans to target land that is already invaded with Chinese tallow tree to be cleared and planted into high yielding, new cultivars for an annual oilseed harvest (with a possibility of 1,000 gallons per acre yields). Both approaches turn an invader into a resource.

There is a legitimate concern about biomass crops being potentially invasive. The red flag wavers need to keep the pressure on to make sure these new biomass crops are developed responsibly, but it would be a mistake to squelch the explorations going on in many places to turn invaders into resources.

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