ABSTRACT

Energy system in mountain regions is complex due to the wide variations in availability and demand of energy resources. Mountain inhabitants are traditionally dependent on bioenergy resources like fuel wood, agro and animal residues for meeting their energy requirements for heating, cooking, etc. However, depleting forest resources limit availability of fuel wood while commercial sources like LPG and kerosene fail to meet the domestic energy demands due to logistic and economic constraints. Hence, the inhabitants are forced to follow inefficient and ad hoc usage of juvenile forest trees (thus hindering regeneration), agro and animal residues disregarding their alternative utilities. This deteriorates the ecological harmony and demands for sustainable resource planning in the regional level. The study assesses the bioresource availability and its potential to meet the bioenergy demands of three mountain districts in the Western Himalayan federal state of Himachal Pradesh. Regions of bioenergy surplus or deficit are identified for different scenarios. The ecological status of forests and actual availability along with the demand of fuel wood in villages are analyzed to highlight the significance of decentralized regional level bioenergy resource planning. BEPA: Bioenergy potential assessment – A Decision Support System (DSS) to facilitate compilation, analysis, representation, interpretation, comparison and evaluation of regional bioresource has been used to visualize bioenergy status. This supports energy planners and policy makers in efficient disaggregated bioenergy resource planning to meet the subsistence and development needs of mountain inhabitants at least cost to the environment and economy.

Keywords: Bioenergy, Decision Support System (DSS), Sustainability,  Forest fragmentation