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CAMBRIDGE, UK, March 1, 2006 (Refocus Weekly)
Farmers will move into a strategic position in
world energy markets within two decades, concludes a British
research analysis.
Farmers receive money for siting wind turbines on their land, but
farms with an area of 1 km² could be worth US$600 million to
manufacturers of solar PV technology, explains ‘Farming Renewable
Energy’ produced by CarbonFree, a UK-based research company that has
completed the study of the renewable energy market for farms.
Large-scale capture of wind and solar energy requires the management
of significant areas of land and, if the market for renewable energy
continues to grow at the current rate, farmers will occupy a
strategic position within the energy market within two decades, it
concludes. While conventional energy producers are starting to look
beyond oil and petroleum as resources, farmers need to look beyond
ethanol and start to build comprehensive energy supply businesses.
“For several decades, the energy market has been dominated by a
handful of companies and closed to new entrants,” says analyst Peter
Kruger. “Advocates of a distributed energy generation model, the so
called ‘Internet of Energy’, are particularly interested in farmed
renewable energy ... because this source of power is readily
available and is a good fit with their plans for a reformed energy
market.”
The ability of the agricultural sector to organize itself and to
provide a comprehensive range of energy products and services will
be the key, the report explains. The importance of farmed energy
will grow, but the fragmented nature of agricultural production will
prevent farmers from dominating the global economy as oil producers
do today, although farmers should be able to make a significant
impact on the energy market.
Although not economic now, farming of solar energy eventually will
benefit from advances in solar cell technology, particularly the
ability to deposit PV materials on low-cost polymer-based
substrates. In theory, installation of such photovoltaic material
could be as straightforward as the deployment of the large amounts
of polythene farmers use to speed up the growth of fruit and
vegetables.
The report examines improvements in the equipment used to farm solar
and the companies that may help to reduce the cost of PV devices to
the point where solar energy farms are self-financing. The potential
of nanotechnology-based materials which extract hydrogen from water
when exposed to sunlight will provide a “step change in the farmed
energy market,” noting that sites with effective areas up to 1 km²
could be worth more than $600 million to manufacturers of thin-film
and polymer-based photovoltaic technology in the medium-term for
large-scale energy farming trials.
This third generation of photovoltaic devices based on
nanotechnology “would greatly reduce the cost of turning the sun’s
energy into a fuel,” and such materials will start to reach the
market at a time when oil-producing countries find that the cost of
activating oil becomes prohibitively high, says Kruger. “Farmed
energy will come at a cost, both political and geopolitical, as the
agricultural sector is empowered economically, and countries within
the solar belt attempt to leverage the advantage they have over the
U.S. and Europe.”
“On any given day, the solar energy falling on a typical oilfield in
the Middle East is far greater than the energy contained in the oil
extracted from it,” the report explains. “While oil provides a
highly concentrated source of power, solar energy is distributed
over a wide area.”
Collecting energy from a wide area is an activity associated with
farming, and an agricultural model should be used for the harvesting
of renewable energy, as opposed to an industrial model. Wind energy
is already profitable in some areas, and a trial in Dakota of a
hydrogen station powered by wind turbines is noted as a potential
application for energy farming in rural areas.
“Energy farming would see rural economies within countries
empowered, and global companies will move operations from Europe to
countries within the solar belt, where they can take advantage of
low cost renewable energy,” it notes. “A key driver for the farmed
renewable energy market is the next generation provider who is
currently unable to enter the energy market; these entrepreneurs,
who are seeking a model that will provide them with a strategic
advantage over incumbent providers, will be attracted to the
distributed nature of farmed renewable energy.”
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