Sweet! Sugarcane is Australia's New Renewable Energy
by Warren McLaren, Sydney on 02.11.08
For the first time in over 125 years sugar cane farmers, in one region of Australia will not burn their crop at harvest time. Instead they will ship the still green waste and cane residue to a new 30 megawatt plants, where it will be burnt to generate power. It what has been described as “one of the country's biggest renewable electricity projects” the co-generation plants will provide baseload power 24 hours a day.
The plants are a joint project between energy provider Delta Electricity and the 650 strong cane growers co-op. They are expected to provide half the power needs of the local community, upwards of 20,000 homes, when they go online with the next harvest in June 2008. The added benefit is that six month cane-burning season won’t produce its usual 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and associated air pollution. A classic win-win. Via ABC.
(Sugar Cane is versatile stuff. We’ve seen it used for a as well for wide variety of applications , as well as paper and even plates and cups. In a previous post we also looked at using macadamia nut waste to generate power.)
Image by ABC’s Damien Hooper
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How do they fertilize the ground after the harvest? This may be renewable, but it sure doesn't sound sustainable.
Those two words must be linked to have any real/lasting effect.
This is a great idea, but is burning sugarcane (or anything) renewable energy?
"The added benefit is that six month cane-burning season won’t produce its usual 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases and associated air pollution."
I'm sure this isn't precisely true - the gasses released from the sugar cane will still be released, Delta will just not produce as much C02 from its coal power stations.
I know it is a good thing just isn't quite accurate.
Sure, it will still produce CO2, but in a hot incinerator with nice scrubbers, that should be about it (and net near 0, since that CO2 will be reabsorbed by next year's field) -- as opposed to the mountain of particulates a field fire would produce.
Cane farmers in North Queensland (Qld) stopped burning cane fields years and years ago. I wonder what took the farmers in New South Wales so long to catch up.
Cane in many Qld regions in harvested 'green' and as I understand it, the trash is either left on the fields to prevent erosion and return nutrients to the soil, or is burned in cogeneration plants to produce electricity, or to provide heat used to processing the sugar.
They also burn macadamia nut shells, which would otherwise be waste from macadamia nut farms, to generate electricty. They're quite inovative up there.
I agree with Ryhuso-- the same amount of CO2 will be released.
The benefit of this action is to actually make use of this CO2 release.
"I'm sure this isn't precisely true - the gasses released from the sugar cane will still be released, Delta will just not produce as much C02 from its coal power stations."
It's replacing coal so the pollutants won't be released into the air since the coal will continue to sit in the ground. The article is accurate.
The silly old fool who did Prime Minister impresions for the past 11 years kept the cane farmers from generating energy for years.
The cane farmers go bankrupt every now and then and the government bails them out. All to keep the coal industry unchallenged.
Sugar growing is also killing the Great Barrier Reef. Thousands of tons of fertiliser gose into the ocean every year.
Is this worth it for a bunch of lollies?
wow, i never expected sugarcane to be a source of energy.
As part of the milling process the dust created from crushing the cane to make sugar is seperated and then mixed with the mud and water left over from the cruch process along with the ash from teh electricity generation.
This mixture is returned to teh cane fields to replace nutrients. So yes it is sustainable and will hopefully reduce any requirements on chemical fertilisers.
It may not be a complete cycle but it is very close and is a huge improvement on the current status
Thanks
the co2 will be a circle when that plant grows they suck up co2 when burned it will be released but new plants will recoup the expelled co2
the co2 will be a circle when that plant grows they suck up co2 when burned it will be released but will be sucked back by new plants.