Renewable Energy Fuel Switch Project, Fossil Fuel Bio Mass, Wind Power Project

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Renewable Energy (RE) presents environmental advantages and allows for the preservation of rapidly diminishing fossil resources. RE has numerous applications across a wide range of sectors such as power generation, energy-intensive industries, transport, construction and some non-commercial applications such as those for domestic purposes.

The drivers for the implementation of RE are numerous as it is more and more clear that:

The conventional power generating systems have been unable to meet the growing energy demands in an equitable and sustainable manner;

There is a strong negative impact of conventional energy production and consumption on the environment.

RE is particularly adapted to meet the energy needs of the population in rural and remote areas, notably those residing on islands.

The utilization of RE sources for the generation of energy is considered to produce "zero-carbon emissions", the production of power and heat using RE sources does not result in the emission of greenhouse gases. Therefore, RE projects have a tremendous potential of generating carbon credits.

As for now, 95% of global commercial energy is based on fossil fuels and nuclear power. Although significant advances have been made in some sectors of RE such as wind, hydro and solar, its representation is still small because of the numerous barriers in the implementation of renewable energy technologies.

One barrier is that corresponding market prices of conventional energy are cheaper, notably because the negative externalities of these energy sources on the environment are not reflected in their costs.

The unwillingness of financial institutions, in general, in providing financing for RE projects, also proves to be a big hurdle for the RE developers. Investment barriers are mostly due to the uncertainties attached to some RE sources with regard to the weather and also because most of the projects are on a small scale.

Wind power is the fastest growing renewable energy sector in the world, where significant progress has been made in terms of technology and pricing. In many developing countries, wind power has penetrated the market because these countries have indigenized originally imported technologies and because the technologies have beneficiated from lower component prices, government incentives and the attraction of private players for investments in the power sector. The cost per MW of installed capacity for wind power projects is thus coming down substantially to yield significant economic and environmental benefits.

Carbon Management Consulting has promoted various fuel-switch (fossil fuel to biomass) projects on a wide scale. Typically, these fuel switch projects involve the replacement of coal or furnace oil with readily available biomass like bagasse, rice husk, mustard residue, black liquor etc. In addition to the benefits in greenhouse gases abatement, these projects have been successful in achieving substantial socio-economic benefits by creation of jobs and means of further income for farmers in the region as they can now sale their biomass residues to the industries. Still, as fuel-switch requires technological inputs with regards to system specifications, technological and investment barriers prevent the wide-spread uptake of such fuel-switch projects.