Sustainable Energy Sources

In the last two days we have been dealing about sustainable energy technologies.

In the lecture on Monday, Jukka Paatero gave us details on the trends of international energy generation and consumption habits in the last decades, how the different energy sources can be harnessed to function - such as hydro, biomass, solar and wind energy sources which are clean and environmentally friendly ones.

Hydro power is the most clean source of energy, although in some cases may affect the local river ecosystem. In developing countries, however, the enormous initial cost of installation may hamper its development.

There is high coal deposits in different parts of the world, unless alternative sources of energy production is curbed, our environment may be polluted by more coal emissions - coal is bad choice in terms of cleanness.

The energy demands of developing communities can be filled by decentralized systems, albeit energy inefficiencies and bulk resource consumption.

Biomass based energy sources are one of the potential sources of energy. With efficient energy extraction, biomass can supply enough amount to rural communities. Biomass energy is mostly obtained by open air cooking(less efficient), but can be more efficient up to by charcoal production(pyrolysis), fermenting, controlled boiling systems or anaerobic digestive bio-gas plants.

Alcohol production and anaerobic digestion are another energy options, except they need too much biomass in the scale that can’t be afforded by rural communities.

The most economically effective ones are micro hydro power generation, if there is a suitable topography for that. Firstly, they need less investment. Secondly, they can serve remote localities well without the need to import oil or any additional resources. Wind and Solar are best although both are dependent on geography and latitude.

Workshop on Sustainable Energy

In the workshop we were consultants for a pro-environmental protection group against the politically inspired BIG dam for electricity in Congo. We had to present alternative solutions to stop the project implementation.

There are some problems associated with the dam – there is too much silt upstream, the dam may force relocation of about 2500 local residents, it greatly affects the natural ecosystem in the local and upstream river and forests…etc.

Accordingly these conditions, we discussed the issue intensively to come up with a solution that outsmarts this big hydro power project. Our ambition was to propose an array of alternative energy sources that could be implemented according to the local available resources.

One important information we got from Jukka was that Congo is a cloudy tropical and non-coastal(non windy) country. This forced us to change our idea of proposing these ineffective solutions.

The best possible solutions may be DECENTRALIZED and LOCAL micro hydropower and bio-fuel productions. A tropical forest can also be a good source of charcoal as a supplementary solution. The problems associated with decentralization could be corruption and inequity depending on localities.

In our discussion we included, if the above proposal fails to fulfill the energy demands of the government, then reducing the side effects of the project may be a plausible idea.

There were three other groups too, they were also using alternative energy sources to electrify Addis Ababa school in a slum, a Burkina Faso turbine driven by a drinking water stored in a big tanker on hilly height and a micro hydro project in a hilly Indian Mynsyari town.

The alternative energy solutions were proposed by different groups were criticized and commented by other groups.

My Conclusions

Both in the workshop and the lecture, I got to know the significance of alternative energy sources. As a student from a developing world, its inspiring to know these easily feasible solutions.

On our group/Group 2/, we were given a national and big project to replace it with the alternative sources. As Jukka latter commented on the assignment, we were a bit perplexed to take the idea seriously – it feels more idealistic to deal with infeasible and incomparable scales.

Over all it was awesome to see the projects of other groups too.