Greening the Desert with Bamboo

Beautifying the city or public facilities is increasingly prevalent today. In addition to adding beauty so that residents or the community increasingly like it, beautifying the city and public facilities is also designed to function to add freshness to the air and shade, namely by greening it with suitable plants. Cities or public facilities that are hot and arid because there are no leafy plants are certainly not attractive. Moreover, a city that will be built in a desert area, greening is absolutely necessary.

Bamboo is an adaptive plant that can even be planted in marginal lands including desert lands. And because of the need to beautify the city, ornamental bamboo species are more suitable. There are a number of ornamental bamboo species that can be an option. The beauty factor related to plant design and the city layout concept is a consideration for the selection of these ornamental bamboo species. And this bamboo planting can be done massively, especially for large desert areas so that it is green and beautiful. It is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia that will make a futuristic city in desert land costing around $ 500 billion even with the Saudi Green Initiave (SGI) program which intends to fight climate change targeting planting 10 billion trees throughout Saudi Arabia so that the use of bamboo can be an option interesting. Saudi Arabia is currently economically dependent on the oil and gas sector 56% with a vision of 2030 also reducing dependence on its oil and gas sector and pursuing the success of the UAE which is only 34%.

Compared to ASEAN countries, namely trade and investment cooperation with Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, the three countries in ASEAN surpass Indonesia and these Middle Eastern countries. The performance of Indonesia's investment and trade cooperation relations is indeed concerning compared to the three countries in ASEAN. Indonesia still fails to identify opportunities with a country that has the purchasing power and economic capability that has the highest income in the world. The oil and gas and non-oil and gas trade deficit between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia reached 60%. Supplying the need for bamboo seeds as well as creating plantations can be one of the efforts to reduce the trade deficit.

Meanwhile, if the goal is to green the desert or barren areas for the production of biomass as industrial raw material, then the choice of bamboo species is also different for the purpose of beauty of the city. Specific bamboo species can be selected for this purpose. The factors of altitude, the type of industry to be made are several things for selecting the type of bamboo to be planted or used for example for bioenergy or biomaterials. Wood-based industries in general can be replaced with bamboo.

Reducing Emissions or Increasing Electric Vehicles?

The photo from here

Basically the main background of the two things above is climate problem due to greenhouse gases, especially CO2 (carbon dioxide), so of course the fundamental answer or priority is to reduce these emissions (greenhouse gases). Electric vehicles can reduce these emissions if the prerequisites are met. The main prerequisite, of course, is where the source of the electrical energy used comes from. If the source of electricity is from fossil energy sources such as oil, coal and natural gas which produce greenhouse gas emissions, in essence the electric vehicle is not environmentally friendly, even though the power plants is far from the use of the electric vehicles.

Electric vehicles should use electricity from renewable energy sources so they don't increase the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, one of which can be read here. Production of electricity from renewable energy should be encouraged and supported first so that the amount is sufficient and after that only proceed with these electric vehicles. If this is not done, then no matter how many electric vehicles (buses, cars, and electric motorcycles) it will still not have a positive effect on the climate. A comprehensive understanding of the climate problem including its solutions and especially in the field of transportation with electric vehicles is something important, before moving on to the implementation stage.

Carbon capture and storage technology (Carbon Capture and Storage / CCS) has indeed been introduced, but its implementation is still very minimal and expensive so this technology has not been applied in Indonesia, especially in fossil-fuel power plants, the majority of which are coal. A number of CCS technologies that are being tested are amine-based adsorption (organic compounds and functional groups whose contents consist of lone-paired nitrogen atoms) are the most advanced carbon capture technologies. But apart from technical factors, economic factors are still the main obstacle.

So the best choice is to encourage and support as much as possible the use of renewable energy sources as a source of energy for these electric vehicles. If the electric vehicle operates with a renewable energy source that is environmentally friendly because it does not increase CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere or is an effort to decarbonize the transportation sector, then that is essentially a program that is perfectly successful according to the intent and purpose of developing the electric vehicle.