Excerpts from a presentation made by B.R.O. Fernando, Past President of the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka (IESL) and a former Vice Chairman of the Ceylon Electricity Board on Challenges and Opportunities in the Use of Renewable Energy at IESL and the
Growing evidence has convinced most of the scientific community that some degree of climate change has taken place. This climate change is due to a small glitch in the sun’s output of energy or due to the activities of human kind or both. But the media and everyone else slip easily into the use of phrases like “greenhouse gases”and global warming.”
The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide and other gases present in the atmosphere has shown an increasing number of signs that the nature of the earth’s surface is beginning to change. The discussions held at Kyoto and Johannesburg have increased the awareness of renewable energy.It is worth mentioning that if we compare the emissions from electrical power plants we find that using coal or oil to generate produces 1110 gm of CO2 /KWH. Using gas reduces CO2 to 600 gm/KWH and biomass reduces CO2 dramatically to 16 gm/KWH. ((Ref: World Renewable Energy Congress 2002).
The Meethotamulla garbage dump has raised and resulted in a hornets nest of insurmountable and unaccountable proportions, resulting in the loss of life to 32 innocent people and 30 missing persons followed by the devastation of their homes and livelihood. These poor people’s agony and disgust at living in an area inhaling an agonising smell with an unhygienic environment full of toxic gases, insects, worms and flies was not the general concern nor was it brought to the attention of some politicians of successive governments and health authorities for nearly two decades. This devastation of their livelihood was a blessing in disguise as it has now resulted in immediate measures to inspect and control the management of other garbage dumps around the country, and provided a planned scientific method for waste management techniques using landfills.
Biomass industries are an asset to any country where energy is generated from waste. A wide range of technological pathways are available, ranging from domestic open fires to bio-fermentation processes for the treatment of organic wastes of a community, to fully commercial complex thermo chemical reactors in the form of 100MW combined heat and power stations. Waste from municipal and industrial services represents an increasingly important fuel source that can be used to produce heat and power. Using these wastes as fuel can have important environmental benefits. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, 21 times more damaging than carbon dioxide emissions through displacement of fossil fuels produced by biodegradable waste and residue. When diverted to a landfill, gas is collected and used as a fuel (rather than allowed to escape in to the atmosphere, thus avoiding methane emissions). Contributions made at various forums look optimistically at renewable energy technologies of both those that are well established and those that are still a long way from making a commercial impact. Wind power, passive and electronic solar energy and certain new methods in the use of biomass have moved into the normal commercial world. Technologies such as waves, ocean, thermal and tidal energy and the hydrogen economy have not, as yet; but the prospects are still good and the potential benefits are enormous. (Heat, power or transport fuels)
Landfill gas
Energy can also be recovered from waste that had already been