Abstract
Bioresources particularly the dendro energy resources play significant role in meeting the energy requirement of both domestic and industrial requirements. With the improvement in the technology of conversion and utilization over the last three decades dendro energy resources have reached a status of being considered as commercial energy resources and are prioritized for use in decentralized biomass based power generation projects. However, many biomass based power plants started in the country in general and the state of Tamil Nadu in particular have exhibited various constraints which resulted in uncertained power generation. The reasons are numerous but the key factors are non-availability of quality (High Calorific Value) raw material, fragmented land use pattern, lack of site specific HDSR models, unorganized supply chain and lack of partnership among various stake holders. Against this back drop, the current project has conceived a concept of consortium mode dendro energy farming by comprehensively involving all levels of stake holders viz., research institutes for technology development for dendro energy resources, biomass power plant for assuring minimum support price and to facilitate contract farming, the farmers to grow energy trees identified by the research institutes and adopt precision silvicultural technology and lastly the financial institution to provide credit facilities to energy plantation growers. This consortium has been successfully introduced and implemented in Tamil Nadu in association with Auromira Energy Company Limited which have three Biomass Power Plants with an installed capacity of 35.5 MW. Through this consortium, the research institute has identified high yielding energy rich species and developed HDSR models suitable for varied agroclimatic zones. This consortium has introduced contract dendro energy farming in the state following farm forestry and captive model approaches. The various contract farming models land lease, tree share and income share models have been introduced through this consortium to benefit the growers and the biomass based power plants. In a holistic perspective the consortium has reduced the impact of multipartite supply chain in to a bi-partite, tri-partite and quad partite model supply chain thereby helped to augment the Production to Consumption System (PCS). This model can suitably be modified to meet the wood requirement of other wood based industries. This paper discusses the constraints and the interventions made to augment dendrobioresources to generate power which are from clean and green bioresources.
Keywords
Biomass, Fuel wood, Solar PV, Calorific value, Renewable power, Energy consortia, Bi-Partite model