Abstract
This paper sees in indigenous biomass and other natural resources such as sun and wind and water, especially in Third World countries (most of which lie in the torrid or semi-torrid zones and a vast majority of whose populations live in rural areas), a potential alternative to non-renewable sources of energy such as oil and nuclear power. Biomass can be transformed into various forms of energy: solids (firewood and charcoal), liquids (alcohol and oil), gases (methane and hydrogen), and electricity. They are at once renewable and non-polluting, viable and inexpensive, decentralized and labour-intensive. The paper also surveys the efforts being made in Third World countries to make use of these energy-producing resources. But it adds that care will have to be taken, using appropriate social measures, to ensure that, unlike oil and nuclear energy, biomass energy is not only decentralized (which it has to be by its nature) but also equitably shared (which mere decentralization does not guarantee) by all sections of the rural population.
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