TNAU Energy Soft 2016: An Efficient Energy
Audit Tool to Identify Energy Saving
Technologies for Sustainable Agriculture
13
Ga. Dheebakaran, D. Jegadeeswari, SP. Ramanathan,
and S. Kokilavani
Abstract
The face of the earth surface has been changed by the human activities particularly land use changes. World agriculture occupies about 38% of Earth’s terrestrial surface. The modern day agricultural economy has become more energyintensive. Sustainability in agriculture should ensure both agricultural productivity and environmental safety. Agriculture being one of the important consumer of
energy, particularly fossil fuels, generates greenhouse gas emissions. It is very
important to curtail the use of high energy and non-renewable energy sources in
farming activity. Further, reducing the use of non-renewable energy sources and
increasing the efficiency of energy use, would reduce the greenhouse gas
emissions from the agriculture sector. Energy auditing is a method to understand
which component of the technology involves high energy and inefficient in
generating outputs. TNAU Energy Soft 2016 is an energy audit tool, which
helps the scientists working on agricultural technologies to identify the better
input energy source combination (renewable/non-renewable/commercial/noncommercial) of technology without doing repeated and expensive field trials.
This is a simple, user-friendly windows based desktop application which
facilitates easy selection of input sources; adds new energy source, crop and
field operations; compares six treatments at a stretch. The resulting output
includes detailed analysis and abstract of energy use of a single treatment,
individual field operation-wise energy use within a treatment, net energy benefit,
energy efficiency and category-wise energy use. The TNAU Energy Soft 2016
helps scientist to ensure sustainability in agricultural productivity, environmental
safety and sustainable bioeconomy through finding the ways and means of
reducing non-renewable fossil fuel based inputs and increasing the use of renewable and biological resources.
G. Dheebakaran (*) · D. Jegadeeswari · SP. Ramanathan · S. Kokilavani
Agro Climate Research Centre, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India
e-mail: gadheebakaran@tnau.ac.in
# Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
V. Venkatramanan et al. (eds.), Sustainable Bioeconomy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7321-7_13
285
Audit Tool to Identify Energy Saving
Technologies for Sustainable Agriculture
13
Ga. Dheebakaran, D. Jegadeeswari, SP. Ramanathan,
and S. Kokilavani
Abstract
The face of the earth surface has been changed by the human activities particularly land use changes. World agriculture occupies about 38% of Earth’s terrestrial surface. The modern day agricultural economy has become more energyintensive. Sustainability in agriculture should ensure both agricultural productivity and environmental safety. Agriculture being one of the important consumer of
energy, particularly fossil fuels, generates greenhouse gas emissions. It is very
important to curtail the use of high energy and non-renewable energy sources in
farming activity. Further, reducing the use of non-renewable energy sources and
increasing the efficiency of energy use, would reduce the greenhouse gas
emissions from the agriculture sector. Energy auditing is a method to understand
which component of the technology involves high energy and inefficient in
generating outputs. TNAU Energy Soft 2016 is an energy audit tool, which
helps the scientists working on agricultural technologies to identify the better
input energy source combination (renewable/non-renewable/commercial/noncommercial) of technology without doing repeated and expensive field trials.
This is a simple, user-friendly windows based desktop application which
facilitates easy selection of input sources; adds new energy source, crop and
field operations; compares six treatments at a stretch. The resulting output
includes detailed analysis and abstract of energy use of a single treatment,
individual field operation-wise energy use within a treatment, net energy benefit,
energy efficiency and category-wise energy use. The TNAU Energy Soft 2016
helps scientist to ensure sustainability in agricultural productivity, environmental
safety and sustainable bioeconomy through finding the ways and means of
reducing non-renewable fossil fuel based inputs and increasing the use of renewable and biological resources.
G. Dheebakaran (*) · D. Jegadeeswari · SP. Ramanathan · S. Kokilavani
Agro Climate Research Centre, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India
e-mail: gadheebakaran@tnau.ac.in
# Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
V. Venkatramanan et al. (eds.), Sustainable Bioeconomy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7321-7_13
285