Odnawialne źródła energii szansą dla Wielkopolski. Monografia

Abstract

The monograph describes the past, the present and the future of renewable energy in Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) Voivodeship in Central-West Poland. This region, for years playing the leading role in agriculture and food production in the whole country, also has very good conditions for the development of renewable methods of energy production. Moreover, it also has long traditions in this field being, for example, the cradle of water and wind milling in Poland. Individual chapters are devoted to various sources of renewable energy, i.e. biomass, wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy and hydroenergy. In each case the description of physical principles allowing to produce electricity and/or heat from a given type of a renewable installation, together with some explanations of the construction and operating mode of the respective technical devices, is followed by the history of their development, both all over the world and in Poland (including a more detailed specification for Greater Poland). Then, the present state (the number of installations, their geographical distribution, the total electric and/or heat power) in Wielkopolska voivodeship is described. Finally, the perspectives of a possible development of each renewable branch in this province are characterized, including quantitative evaluation of the respective technical potential. The authors indicate especially significant possibilities related to the large supply of biomass in Wielkopolska, being the province with the best developed agriculture in Poland. According to their calculations, from solid biomass and biogas (both obtained from organic waste which is a by-product of agricultural production) it is possible to produce, within the whole voivodeship, as much as 6.3 TWh of electric energy and 26.9 PJ of heat, which is ca. 50% and ca. 90%, respectively, of its present electricity and heat consumption. Moreover, in the new biogas plants ca. 4500 people would be employed. Also the wind energy sector has good perspectives in Wielkopolska.Its technical potential is ca. 7.54 GW, while the total amount of electricity that could be produced from wind is ca. 15.0 TWh, exceeding the present consumption in the province (12.5 TWh). The full usage of wind energy technical potential would ensure 29,400 new workplaces. Assuming that 5% of roofs on public and private buildings in Wielkopolska could be equipped with solar panels, the total amount of electric energy production would be 8.2 TWh. Wielkopolska has a very good geothermal localization, which promotes the development of geothermal heating plants, as well as balneology and tourism associated with warms waters. It would allow to employ at least 6000 people. Assuming that half of the hydrotechnical structures located in Wielkopolska could be used for electricity generation, the technical potential of electric power amounts to 246 MW, while the possible annual production to 1.22 TWh. The number of new workplaces has been evaluated as ca. 1500. Moreover, the construction of hydropower plants is also possible in case of the presently active 32 waste water treatment stations in the province. The total technical potential of renewable energy sources in Wielkopolska significantly exceeds the present consumption and demand for electric energy and heat in the province. Full exploitation of this potential would allow to replace all fossil fuels presently burnt in the province, especially because application of co-generation (or even tri-generation) methods, characteristic of small facilities using biomass and biogas, increases the total energy efficiency (while in big, “systemic” power plants, heat is usually the lost byproduct only). Moreover, the specific character of local energy production, typical of low-scale enewables which are numerous and territorially highly dispersed (again in contrast to conventional coal- and lignite-fired power plants), limits significant losses related to the electricity transfer over large distances. Renewable energy facilities create many workplaces, especially in the countryside, where the unemployment rate is usually higher than in big cities. They are also sources of financial benefits (taxes, etc.), which supply local budgets at each level, i.e. the whole province, but also districts and communes. Thus, the building and development of new renewable installations should be regarded as a superior public interest. Last but not least, in contrast to the energy sector based on fossil fuels whose resources are limited and nowadays are starting to be exhausted also in Wielkopolska (the best known example being lignite deposits in Konin and Turek districts), each branch of the renewable sector uses the sources of energy which are, by definition, renewable. It is evident for everybody that the supply of biomass, wind, sun, geothermal energy and hydroenergy will last infinitively, at least in the time scale of human civilization. This is why also workplaces related to the renewable energy sector are much more stable than those related to fossil fuels which are presently diminishing (which is well illustrated by the decreasing number of people employed in the coal mining sector, including lignite mine companies in Wielkopolska). Thus, the social and economic needs to maintain the size of the labour market in the province are in favour of the development of the renewable energy sector.