14 DAY TRIAL // Using only seven indigenous plant species, India has successfully developed its first biomass energy plantation, while at the same time providing the local women from southern Tamil Nadu with a suitable workplace.
As the National Commission on Agriculture from India declares in one of their recent interviews, a staggering 60 million hectares of Indian land is currently agriculture- and forests-free.
This means that the government is more than welcome to use these areas so as to grow the country's first biomass plantation.
For those who find themselves a bit uninformed on the topic of using biomass sources so as to come up with green and renewable types of energy, let us try and explain things a bit.
The simplest of ways to do so is as follows: through the process of gasification, which in itself is heat-controlled, organic material is converted into gas, which is then burnt to come up with the amount of energy required to properly run a power plant.
As one can easily guess, there is one very important principle that stands at the core of this whole operation.
The better the care given to whatever species the biomass plantation is composed of, the more organic material will be available for the conversion process and thus more environmentally-friendly energy will be produced in the end.
India seems to be quite eager to act according to this line of reasoning, as proven by its investing quite a large amount of money in drip irrigation systems and carefully monitoring the rate of growth of the entire plantation.
Not only does this Indian biomass plantation provide proper working material for the country's power plants, but, as ipsnews.com reports, significant improvements in the region's micro-climate have also been reported since this project was first implemented.
Rough numbers show that maintenance for one acre of this the biomass plantation requires about $400 (€318) per year, with a total amount of 50 tonnes of biomass produced during the same period of time.
Interestingly enough, the power plant ran by means of the biomass produced here is already allowed to upload power into the national grid, therefore it can be argued that, should things go as planned, we might soon be looking at a whole new face of India.