Assignment 4

Ethanol Power Plant

Today we went and saw a bioenergy plant, which runs on primarily sugarcane. The sugarcane is mixed with water and then is fermented and further processed, until it eventually becomes a usable ethanol.

I found seeing this plant rather fascinating. It was very different from the other power plants in the sense that its primary source to be processed came from agriculture, the harvesting of a crop, rather than the harvesting of a naturally occurring source.

I thought that the output of the plant was moderate, considering what had to be done. The instantaneous power output of the power plant is around 50 MW, which is a substantial amount of power, however there was one thing that I found rather concerning in order for this power to be developed. I had asked one of the engineers there how many hectares of sugarcane do they grow for the plant, and the answer that the engineer provided me was somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 000 hectares, which is an absolutely enormous amount of land in my mind.

One thing that really resonates with me about alternative energy sources and its effect on the environment is its consumption of our earth’s resources, such as land and water. To generate a substantial amount of ethanol from sugarcane means that large amounts of rainforest and other naturally occurring environments have to be disrupted, whether that means cutting trees down, exiling the native wildlife, or something even worse, I see sugarcane production as a huge disruption.

One negative externality that is primarily generated by humans that concerns me in the amount of CO2. By cutting down trees and other flora in order to grow sugarcane, we are further increasing our carbon footprint, because all of those trees breathe in CO2 which helps mitigate our footprint. Tying back things to water, another finite resource we have, a lot is spent watering the sugarcane so that it can be harvested. I feel that water would best be used elsewhere.

There are a few things that I did appreciate about the ethanol plant however. I liked the fact that it powers itself purely off of the energy that it generates. I think this is a great step towards what we should define as renewable energy. Although the plant does still consume resources like water and does emit further CO2, not drawing more power from the grid is definitely a step in the right direction. The engineers from the plant had told us that all of the products that come from harvesting the sugarcane are used, and that is very good thing in my mind. In the case of hydroelectric power, there is definitely some waste by not capturing all of the water that is processed, so it is good that everything is being used.

While I am not a big believer in this alternative energy source at least in its current form, I still definitely believe it is a step in the right direction, so that we can get further and further away from our dependence on fossil fuels and move to something that is sustainable as well minimize our environmental impact.