IssuE 8 – ApRIl – JuNE 2011 - Winrock International India

Energy Plantations
requirements through a series of
backward integration steps involving
principles of electrical engineering,
management and forestry.
An Energy Plantation (Courtesy, EPPI)
Role of Urban Professionals
Where do Urban Professionals
figure in this scheme of things Their
entry is best facilitated by one of
the outstanding aspects of initiative
taken by MNRE. It is the scalability.
The initiative facilitates setting up
Power Stations with capacities of
few hundred kW and the associated
energy plantation of 15-20 acres
for fuel security. The initiative also
facilitates setting up Power Stations
with capacity of up to 2 MW and
the associated energy plantation of a
few hundred acres for fuel security.
It is this wide range of business
possibilities and business prospects
that is drawing the attention of urban
professionals with disposable incomes.
The “Eco-System” referred to in the
very first paragraph of this article is
the Cause Célèbre’ developed by EPPI.
In the process of developing this Eco-
System, the company came across
the unique nature and advantages
of Urban Professionals taking up the
Green Energy Initiative. Following
text is a result of years of experience,
convictions and proof. It augurs well
at this juncture to declare that EPPI
consists of professionals none of whom
had any exposure or experience in
forestry or agriculture. They started
with this disadvantage and they found
over a period of time that this lack
of expertise turned out to be to their
advantage in terms of innovation and
non-conformity.
Current day urban professionals
bring in the planning and work
culture not common in the world of
forestry and agriculture. Best of their
attitudes stems from their quest to
make the establishment recursive
for performance excellence. Applied
R&D, formal management systems
like reviews, standard operating
procedures, computerization,
documentation etc. are some of the
elements of the standard building
blocks of their recursive approach. In
addition to minimizing subjectivity in
all aspects of forestry development,
they could improve predictability of
forest growth tremendously and the
downstream predictability of feedstock
availability to the power stations. This
entailed a very innovative approach
of converting the Power Station
Some of the outstanding advantages
urban professionals bring in, in the
field of energy plantations leading to
Power are enumerated below:
°° Reduction of cycle time in almost
all activities.
°° Elimination of rework to a large
extent.
°° Seeking and inclusion of new
technologies and professional
disciplines and making bioenergy a
multi-disciplinary approach.
°° Lack of fear (comparable) of failure
in experimentation.
°° Social inclusion as a part of
business execution rather than as
charity or as CSR.
°° Innovation in technologies as well
as management practices.
°° Out of the Box strategic thinking
°° Formalization of the age-old
wisdom of rural workers in the
form of documentation and
Standard Operating Procedures.
The attitudes and approaches
of educated urban professionals
enumerated here are assets in the
field of energy plantations for Power.
Some of the achievements of EPPI bear
testimony to the results of possessing
these assets.
°° Cost of Biomass (feedstock) is
anywhere between 60 to 70% of
the cost of production of one unit
of electricity. EPPI is able to bring
this cost down to 15 to 20%. One
can appreciate the profitability in
business in such a case.
°° Predictability of the feedstock
supply (lack of which haunted the
Power Stations for so long) can be
achieved with all round benefits.
°° In their 300 acres of energy
April-June 2011
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