According to a senior sugar official in Mauritius, a third of the country’s power generation will be produced by sugar within the next seven years. According to a Reuters report, sugar will become the largest part of the government’s national target for renewable energy.
Mauritius plans to produce 40% of its electricity from renewable sources within the next 10 years. Currently 19% of its power is produced by the burning of sugar cane waste, or bagasse.
The country is in the process of testing other varieties of cane and the burning of waste left in the fields after harvest, Babu Rajpati, Executive Director of the Mauritius Sugar Authority, told Reuters. "All this could bring me closer to 32 or 33 percent of electricity," he said in an interview. "The horizon is 2015."
The switch to using sugar cane for energy will not require much investment according to Rajpati. "You can burn all this biomass in existing installations," he said.
The government is also looking at other alternative sources of energy for power generation such as wind farms, sea water, sun, and landfill gas emissions.