The Renewable Electricity - Research Paper Example

?(Add (Add (Add Renewable Electri – Innovation and Integration into Farming Introduction In the context of current environmental issues, agriculture has a crucial role to play on earth, especially in relation to global warming and climate change. Since agriculture is a major contributor to harmful emissions, it is possible to reduce future environmental impacts by efficiently treating agricultural technologies. As the source of biomass and biofuels, agriculture can play a central role making the earth green. Introduction of innovative renewable energy resources are necessary to tackle the issue of energy crisis and thereby meet mounting energy demands effectively. Nowadays, the practice of integration of renewable electricity into farming is common in Europe and some American countries. Each country has distinct policies concerning innovation and integration of renewable energy into farming. This paper will critically analyze the practice of using renewable electricity in farming activities by giving focus on its importance, pros and cons, challenges, and future status. Renewable electricity in farming: Canadian experiences The Canadian agriculture sector has successfully integrated renewable energy into its farming activities. The Canadian government has taken extensive initiatives including ERDAF (Energy Research and Development in Agriculture and Food) program to introduce renewable energy use in the country’s farming sector. The ERDAF program initially focused on research and development needs, energy production priorities, and utilization possibilities. The major objective of this program was to promote Canadian farmers’ self-sufficiency on energy. In the beginning phase, the program introduced renewable energy in 90 projects. This program specifically evaluated problems on resource assessment and liquid fuel production using biomass feedstock. It also considered solar and wind energy. The ERDAF program report indicates that it does not get much significance due to higher initial costs. However, it was identified that the biomass produced can be used for space heating or electricity generation (Integration Renewable Energy on Farms). It is concluded that development of cost effective and potential technologies is vital to promote integration of renewable energy into farming. The Building Canada Fund or simply BC Fund, which was set up under the 2007 Building Canada plan to finance projects from 2007 to 2014, offers financial assistance to Canadians who want to integrate renewable energy into their agricultural and agri-food farming operations. The Canadian government believes that this innovation would assist the country’s farmers to enhance their competitiveness. In the words of federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, “adopting renewable technologies like wind turbines and geothermal heating will help ensure a sustainable future for farming and the environment” (qtd in Ministry of Agriculture). The government also thinks that this practice would assist farming firms to cut down energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and diversify their income sources. According to the Canadian policy, all qualified and potential participants will get governmental assistance to incorporate renewable energy into their existing farming activities. The Canadian government has created a set of tools including benchmarks, factsheets, sample implementation plans, and self-assessment tools to assist producers to choose best available technologies. The government has already designed a $475 million federal and provincial support and an additional $78 million non-business risk management programs for this renewable energy project (Ministry of Agriculture). Renewable energy integration into farming: Global situation The practice of integration of renewable electricity into farming has been gaining popularity across the globe for the last few years. Many European countries and United States have achieved significant improvements in integrating renewable energy to their farms. It has been identified that Europe could take advantages of synergies between agriculture and clean energy production by incorporating renewable energy generation technologies with agricultural operations. To illustrate, anaerobic digesters have become common in Europe and some parts of the United States. According to Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), energy availability is a key factor in expanding agricultural activities and therefore non-renewable energy sources may not be potential to meet increasing energy demands in agriculture sector. CTA indicates that use of renewable energy in farming notably reduces farmer’s vulnerability to quickly growing oil prices. In several regions of countries like South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya; wind power is used to pump water in agricultural fields. In Zimbabwe, a newly developed windpump is able to pump nearly 60,000 liters of water per day. Similarly, many Japanese agricultural firms use solar energy to pump water. In addition, the practice of using solar powered fans for tobacco curing, biogas for cattle farmers, charcoal briquettes for brooding chicks, and Jatropha oil as an alternative to kerosene is prevalent in European Countries (CTA). While analyzing policies on integration of renewable energy into agricultural farming around the globe, it seems that governments are major institutions that shape policies. Many governments which are interested to incorporate renewable electricity into farming offer financial and technical assistances to their farmers who want to make use of renewable energy in farming activities. Countries view this type of farming practice as a way to improve their agricultural production without depleting non-renewable energy sources and hurting environmental sustainability. Hence, governments are likely to promote renewable energy powered farming activities in the coming years. Significance of renewable energy in farming Researchers reflect that the world would face potential energy challenges if the energy consumption rate remains to grow at the current pace. In today’s competitive business world, firms are forced to frequently make technological innovations and this situation in turn leads to an increase in the consumption of non-renewable energy sources. In addition, the number and use of vehicles have largely increased over the past two decades and therefore the world’s fossil fuel sources are being drastically depleted. It is obvious that modern farming industry increasingly depends on non-renewable energy powered technologies to carry out its activities such as ploughing, sowing, and reaping. According to Wang, fossil fuel combustion also results in increased greenhouse gas emission which is the root cause of threatening environmental issues like global warming and climate change. Data indicate that the amount of non-renewable energy consumed in farming sector is notably increasing even though this growth is low as compared to other industrial sectors. “As long as energy inputs in industrial agriculture are based on non-renewable resources, industrial agriculture cannot be considered sustainable with regard to the use of energy” (Liebert, 16). Hence, development of potential renewable energy sources is of great importance in modern farming industry so as to ensure the use of clean energy and increased production outputs. The agriculture-energy-climate relation also necessitates that incorporation of renewable energy into farming activities. Renewable energy powered farming activities would assist a country to promote energy security and sustainable economic development (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). Advantages and disadvantages The practice of integrating renewable energy into farming has a wide range of advantages. Firstly, this process would assist nations to make their agricultural production eco-friendly since renewable energy sources are less likely to cause environmental pollution. Hence, it may be beneficial for a country to cut down costs, which are spent on tackling environmental issues. Moreover, an eco-friendly agricultural sector may attract more people/firms to farming industry and this situation in turn would aid the country to increase its agricultural production. Use of renewable energy would benefit the farming sector to reduce operational costs considerably because most of the renewable energy sources including solar and wind energy do not require further maintenance costs once they are installed (Union of Concerned Scientists). Taking advantages of this situation, farming sector can invest more in production components like labor and fertilisers. In addition, this is the better strategy for the farming industry to confront with fluctuating oil prices. As mentioned already, the non-renewable energy is going to run out in the near future. In this context, it is necessary to develop new means of energy sources which would be unaffected by usage rate or financial market fluctuations. Studies indicate that price of renewable energies, to a great extent, is unaffected by other external factors in the global financial market. In short, incorporating renewable energy into farming would ensure cost-effective, eco-friendly, profitable, and sustainable agricultural production. However people like Dvoskin opine that higher installation cost is the most potential demerit of this system. To illustrate, setting of wind turbines is an expensive task in case of establishment of windmills. In addition, availability of environmental factors including wind and sunlight is more likely to influence the potentiality of renewable energy sources. Hence, adverse climatic conditions may negatively affect agricultural production based on renewable energy. In addition, ordinary farmers may not have the expertise to operate renewable energy powered farming activities and this situation reduces the scope this idea. Furthermore, non renewable energy may not be adequate to power large scale farming operations. To conclude, weaknesses of renewable energy integration into farming are far outweighed by the concept’s long term benefits. Why the project is potential? Despite huge installation costs and other external issues, use of renewable energy in agriculture is necessary to improve production without increasing costs. Today, extensive researches are being conducted to develop and integrate new forms of renewable energy into farming at affordable costs (Haper Adems University College). In addition, internet usage around the globe is dramatically increasing and hence farmers can easily obtain relevant and adequate information about renewable energy powered farming process. In addition to governments, other non-governmental organisations and non-profit organisations have begun to provide financial assistance to farmers who require incorporation of modern energy sources into their farming activities. Furthermore, the Canadian experience indicates that this new farming idea is capable of providing long term economic and environmental benefits to a country. Finally, this practice may encourage other industrial sectors also to integrate renewable energy into their operations. Therefore, this farming concept promotes a country’s sustainable economic development. Major challenges Undoubtedly, vastly changing climatic conditions raise potential challenges to the project’s sustainability. Lack of availability of major renewable energy sources like wind and sunlight would dreadfully affect the agricultural production output and this situation may cause huge losses to the national economy. Similarly, governments in the third world countries are not in a position to financially support this new farming concept and hence those countries need to wait more for implementing this project. In addition, many underdeveloped countries do not have adequate expertise yet to run renewable energy powered farming operations. It seems that when a firm integrates renewable energy into its farming activities, the firm may face a series of operational difficulties at initial stages. Therefore, farmers believe that this farming concept is likely to cause some productivity decline issues during the implementation phases. In addition, a vast majority of countries are still unaware of the potentiality of this concept and hence they do not seriously think about the project’s economic scope. Future prognosis Referring to current global energy crisis, people like Fischer, Finnell, and Lavoie comment that the innovative farming concept is more likely to get wide scale attention across the world in the near future. Large farming organisations may be primarily attracted toward this concept because the proposed project would assist them to get benefits from economies of scale. It is predicted that emerging economies like China and India are likely to adopt this farming concept as those economies are struggling to meet their energy needs. In short, the concept of renewable energy powered farming has a great future and scope. Conclusion Integrating renewable energy into farming offers far reaching economic as well as environmental benefits to a nation. This concept assists agriculture sector to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve profitability regardless of the oil price fluctuations in the global market. The major disadvantage of this concept is that it requires huge initial investments. With intent to improve agricultural productivity without hurting environmental sustainability, governments are interested to offer financial and technical assistance to farmers/people who want to incorporate renewable energy into their businesses. Even though this project is likely to face potential challenges including lack of initial capital and technical information, it has greater future scope in the context of depleting conventional energy resources and increasing harmful emissions. Works Cited CTA. “Renewable energy in agriculture.” Rural Radio Resource Pack. (2008): 1-31. 20 May 2012. . Dvoskin, Dan. “Economic realities of utilizing renewable energy in agriculture.” Energy in Agriculture., 6. 4 (11988): 283-293. Fischer, James R, Finnell, Janie A & Lavoie, Brian D. “Renewable energy in agriculture: Back to the future?. Choices. (2006). Web. 20 May 2012. Food and Agriculture Association of United Nations. “Integrated food-energy systems (IFES): Generating climate-smart energy for food security.” Bioenergy. (2012). Web. 20 May 2012. Haper Adems University College. “Research: Will helps farmers choose renewable energy.” (2010). Web. 20 May 2012. Integration Renewable Energy on Farms. “Agriculture in Canada.” (2008). Web. 20 May 2012. Libert, Mary Ann. Sustainability. Bib. Orton IICA / CATIE. 1992. Print. Ministry of Agriculture. “Canada and B.C. fund renewable energy for agriculture.” (2011). Web. 20 May 2012. Union of Concerned Scientists. “Renewable energy and agriculture.” (2012). Web. 20 May 2012. Wang, Michael,. “Updated energy and greenhouse gas emission results of fuel ethanol.” Center for Transportation Research. (2005). Web. 20 May 2012. Read More