When I think of solar power, the first things that pop into my mind are the new garden lights.
The small photovoltaic panels on the decorative lanterns charge a couple of penlight batteries and, voila, you have a pleasing garden accent. But the illumination is not much more than what a firefly generates.
The cost of photovoltaic cells is falling and the applications are increasing, but I doubt that this is going to be the technology that will soon free us from hydrocarbons.
Other technologies are also being explored to use the sun’s energy to provide power for society’s needs.
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But the biggest and often most overlooked solar collectors are farms.
Solar energy, coupled with moisture and nutrients from the soil, grows crops. Mostly we use crops for food and feed, but increasingly they are being viewed as a source of fuel and raw ingredients for industrial products.
Our reporter Sean Pratt has a package of stories on page 59 this week about developments in this field.
Agriculture Canada has identified bioproducts and fuels as fertile areas for research and development. It isn’t alone. Governments all over the world are moving in the same direction to cut emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and reduce reliance on imported oil.
Canada has a few fledgling bio-businesses making ethanol, diesel lubricants and fibreboard.
But the star of the bioproducts world is a Cargill-Dow joint project in Blair, Nebraska, that opened last year.
The plant can process up to 40,000 bushels of corn per day, producing more than 140,000 tonnes of a polymer that is made into a fibre that can be used in clothing and packaging.
The plant illustrates another characteristic of bioproducts. Blair is a town of just 8,000. It’s fairly close to Omaha, but more importantly, it is in corn country.
Location will be even more important as researchers find ways to cut production costs by using cellulose in plant stems to produce the same materials now made from the grain. That could encourage production of more fibrous crops such as high-yield grass.
The expense of moving bulky raw product such as grass and straw will dictate that these bioplants be close to their raw material.
And that will generate much needed jobs in rural areas, all thanks to solar energy.
