Can Singapore grow 10 percent of its electricity

Can Singapore grow 10 percent of its electricity

A country’s energy needs would include firstly all its electricity generated and any other petroleum products used to power all its other machines which do not make use of electricity. This would make up in bulk by the automobiles (including buses) and other forms of power equipment such as tractors. Also gas used in cooking involves a smaller part in our energy needs.

Electricity plays a major role in the power needs of Singapore.  From lighting, heating and cooling it also plays a major role in our physical movement such as running lifts and our trains.

The energy requirement is huge and is still increasing in tandem with the improvement in quality of our lives. At the last count the generating capacity of electricity  in Singapore was a whopping  11.56giga watts with a reserve capacity of 30%.  Most of this electricity is generated through the burning of gas which amounted to 70%, 30% from fuel oil and a bit through burning of rubbish in incinerators. Soon a coal fired power station will come on stream.

The process of generating of electricity itself uses quite a lot of energy. Gas, coal , fuel oil must be burned to create lots of steam which then turns turbines that spins coils of copper wires around magnets to produce the wonder juice that is electricity. The end result energy is only about 40% of the original input. Worst is yet to come.

Nobody knows who will throw on the switch at any one time. Through daily usage we know all people go to work on weekdays. Thus starting around 6am the amount of electricity needed climbs and hovers around a fairly constant rate until when all the people leave their offices. As evening comes most of the city lights turn on as the entertainment world begins its nightly life. Even though we see the lights come on at night and feels the energy all around us the rate of electricity used is lower than in the day. To cope with the unpredictably of electricity usage at any one time, a huge gap exist between the amount used and the amount of electricity being generated at any one time. If there was no such safety margin, any sudden surge in electricity demand will exceed the power available and caused the system to trip so as it is called. This as highlighted earlier is the 30% reserve capacity.

When the electrical system “trip’, some part of the generating must be shutdown unless new sources of supply can be brought in immediately literally in seconds. If not there will be blackouts. All of us know the consequences of lost of power supply. We are so dependent on a failure free electrical supply that when the power supply is down a great deal of inconvenience is created. To make matters worse it will take the generation companies some time to check their system and to fire up their generators again.

 The amount of energy generated as a safety margin is a terrible waste. However no government will dare to cut away this margin. In fact most government will negotiate with the generation companies a fairly lucrative deal to ensure that their electrical supply won’t falter. In the days of cheap oil this was a fairly easy arrangement. However when the price of oil hovers around US$100 per barrel, this wastage seems a bit odd. Till date there is still no solution o this problem.

Coming back to the use of fossil fuel, be it gas, fuel oil and even coal that is used in our electricity, a lot of carbon dioxide is created. This in turn speeds up global warming through the production of carbon dioxide.

 One source of fuel that has not been given serious consideration is the use of biomass in electricity generation. In fact Singapore treats biomass as waste and is burned in incinerators. This ‘waste” usually made up of horticultural trimmings and waste wood from construction can total up to a quarter of a million tons year. Producers of such waste must even pay for their incineration. Sadly more often than not plastics and all other contaminants are also burned in the incinerators. Many people may not agree with me but incinerators are relics of the past.  They were not built for efficiently extract the energy from burning thus their contribution to the power system is paltry. So the supply chain for the incinerators has created yet another inefficiency and also wastage of fuel.

As we can see most of the biomass found in Singapore is horticultural waste. In 2008 about 265000 tons of biomass was collected. Most of them ended in the incinerators while the rest were used for composting. All of us know from time immemorial we have been burning tree cuttings and grass etc. As they created a lot of smoke, such open fires are no longer permitted and thus all of the biomass is burnt in incinerators which have very tall chimneys.

 Few of us realise if you process them properly they can burned very efficiently and without smoke at all. For this to happen, the biomass is processed by grinding leaves and wood into small sizes. This pulp is then compressed into briquettes or sticks. When burnt in furnaces line by special bricks they can attain much higher temperatures thus resulting in more complete combustion. The result is more energy produced and less pollution. Other innovations include the “cooking” this biomass to form a combustible gas.   This resultant gas can be converted to products that can be used very similar to petroleum products. The left over products from this burning of biomass is clean and without pollutants. It can be used as fertilisers, making of bricks and also in landfills

Many countries in the world have started to use biomass as a renewable fuel in their energy needs. Generation plants can come in various sizes. Experience has shown that a 100MW generation would require an input of 400,000 tons of biomass.

What are the problems involve

1)  Collection of Biomass

The biggest problem involved is obviously the collection of biomass. As it is we are already collecting it by our contractors and waste disposal companies. We can enhance the collection process by using the “karang guni” system. We are well versed with the masses of karang guni people who go round collecting old newspaper and whatever we discard.  When we use biomass as a fuel there is economic value in this waste i.e a price for it, it would incentivise groups of people to collect and sell it to the generation plants.

2) Creating more biomass.

To help develop a electricity generation system using biomass as a fuel source, we must be able to a have a sustained supply of biomass. In the equatorial zone there is ample sunshine and we have evergreen trees and shrubs growing all year round. Anyone with a garden will tell you the amount effort needed to prune the garden and the amount of waste in can generate.

When we talk about biomass our ideology is clouded by countries in the temperate zone. Their biomass is usually sawmill’s by products i.e from trees or agricultural waste from farming. They do not have rapid growing evergreens like us. We must think differently. There are many shrubs which we can harvest monthly. These shrubs are usually seen as hedges in our gardens. In order to save human cost, we must develop methods to plant them in ways which we can mechanically harvest them. As can be seen there are still lots of empty land that such shrubs can be grown. Examples are empty land slated for development. When these lands are needed for use the shrubs can easily be uprooted. Shrubs are the best source of biomass as they are a mixture of wood and leaves. This combination provide for easy grinding and also the best source of energy. Leaves have a layer of wax on them. When heated to a high temperature they are turn into a gas that burns at very high temperatures.

The possible contribution from National Parks of Singapore

As we have read of newspaper article that he trees planted many years ago are fast aging, we should be planning to harvest such trees. At present most of our secondary are not pruned. Usually they are left on their own. A good farmer will tell you that is not the way to ensure you get the most healthy plants. Thus pruning the undergrowth and trimming away all the climbers will give rise to healthy growth. National Parks of Singapore is still in the old mindset when it comes to growing plants. Their mission has been the greening of Singapore and thus their motto of living in a park reflects their ideas. The by- products of their work is called horticultural waste. It cost them money to dispose of it thus the less they create the less cost involved. If we turn it round and buy it from them, then this so call  cost centre becomes a profit centre. They will then relook their workings and not hesitate with plant renewal.

Railway land

A great opportunity will come the biomass way as the trains stop running down the railways. This will present environmentalist a vast tract of greenery. It also presents a huge source of biomass farming whilst maintaining the environment. The existing track will provide easy collection and transportation of the biomass without being seen. 

The future supply of oil and gas

The supply of oil and gas is running down in the world. As oil companies go out to search for more oil and gas, they have to go to places further away and drill further down into the earth’s crust. Not only is it much more costly to do so, it has also led to huge disasters such as the recent Horizon oil rig blowout in USA.

The transport of oil and gas is not without risk. The tanker Valdez ran aground of Alaska and caused huge damage to the environment. There are many more such incidents. Storage of oil and gas is also equally expensive. Special tanks are build costing billions of dollars. You will need a large tract of perimeter land adjoining such storage sites for safety reason. For any reason any one of these storage facilities catches fire the losses can be very great.

The transport and storage of biomass on the other hand involves very little risk. There are no blowouts. When a ship laden with biomass sinks there is no pollution. Fire is the only risk but the consequence of a biomass fire is definitely less harmful and polluting then fossil fuels.

Carbon credits.

As biomass is a renewable source of energy, we can claim carbon credits when we use it for generation of electricity. Singapore has a very large deficit of carbon credits. Although our real use of energy per capita is not much higher than others, the carbon fuel use in our chemical, petroleum refineries, bunker supplies to ships and aeroplanes is huge. In future when carbon trading becomes a reality we can still claim some credit offset.  

Spreading the good news to all our equatorial neighbours.

 It has become an annual affair when the haze blows over the whole of South East Asia when the dry season comes. There are many culprits namely the developers of palm oil plantations, illegal loggers and last but not least the farmers. Why do they burn the forest or left over crops?. Obviously the cost factor is the main concern of the plantation developers. The cost of burning down thousands of hectares of forest is only a few match sticks and a few litres of kerosene. However if what they burn can bring them money, then the whole story will change. Not only selling the biomass can bring them money, a lot of jobs downstream is created to the locals by processing the forest waste to biomass fuel. Isn’t this a win win situation as they will benefit from extra income plus job creation whilst we will not have to endure the haze annually. Finally we also have another great source of renewable fuel, without ever worrying about the price of oil going up. It is definitely better to let our neighbours benefit from this revenue than to benefit the petrol dictators.

So with this possibility why are we not embarking on it?. We must come together and change our mindset and start on this path before our national growth comes to grinding halt due to sky high energy prices. If we think our country is too small to generate the amount of biomass needed, we can spread our development to our neighbouring countries. We must start developing the techniques and machinery to handle biomass fuel. Obviously along the way we will become more efficient and will be able to squeeze the most energy out of biomass.  Generating 20% of our needs is the first step. In time we probably can grow enough biomass to satisfy all our energy needs. Who knows?.