Predicting the potential of energy from agricultural wastes in Malaysia

This paper presents the prediction of the potential of energy supply from agricultural wastes in Malaysia until the year 2005. The exponential smoothing method is used to predict the supply of energy from these resources. The prediction is based on four scenarios namely (a) business as usual, (b) increase in the plantation area by 1% (c) increase in productivity by 1% with no increase in plantation area and (d) decrease in plantation area of 1%. The agricultural wastes considered are from rubber, oil palm, cocoa, paddy, coconut and pineapple resources. In Peninsular Malaysia, these resources include groundnut, sugar cane, and tapioca. Assuming an energy conversion of 30%, only three agricultural wastes can contribute as an energy supply i.e. oil palm, paddy and sugar cane wastes. ne contribution of these resources to the demand of energy for Malaysia is 21% in the year 2000 and 17% in the year 2005.