Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 145 (2021) 111083 1364-0321/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Feasibility assessment of renewable energy resources for tea plantation and industry in India - A review K. Ravi Kumar a, * , Kavya Dashora b , Naveen Krishnan a , S. Sanyal d , Hukum Chandra e , S. Dharmaraja c , Vandita Kumari e a Centre for Energy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, 110 016, India b Centre for Rural Development and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, 110 016, India c Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, 110 016, India d Tocklai Tea Research Institute, Tea Research Association, Jorhat, Assam, 785 005, India e Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Tea industry Renewable energy technologies Biomass Solar PV Wind turbine Micro-hydro ABSTRACT In tea production, India ranks second largest in the world, after China. Indian tea industry is one of the largest in the world and with over 13,000 gardens and produces 1350 million kg of tea leaves. Tea production and pro- cessing require electrical and thermal energy in various processes such as irrigation, withering, rolling, fermentation, drying, sorting/grading, and packaging. To produce one kg of tea requires thermal and electrical energy in the range of 4.45–6.84 kWh and 0.4–0.7 kWh respectively. In tea gardens, diesel generators are commonly used for irrigational needs in off-grid areas. In tea industry, fossil fuels such as coal, low sulphur diesel are mostly used to encounter the thermal energy needs and these energy sources heavily pollute the environ- ment. This is a serious cause of concern for all including national and international agencies. These conventional fuels may be replaced by suitable renewable energy resources to meet the energy demand of tea plantations and industries. The identifcation of suitable renewable energy technologies to satisfy the energy requirement of both tea plantation and industry for north-eastern states and the southern part of India are reviewed extensively and the technological barriers are delineated. 1. Introduction India enjoys an ace position in the production of black tea. The growth and production of tea have been reported higher than other plantation crops in the country (Table 1). After water, the most sought and consumed drink is tea [1]. Over the past decades, production and consumption of tea have increased steadily and its production became one of the economic pillars of the countries like China, India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya [2]. An ever increasing energy demand and depletion of non-renewable energy sources will shortly result in the reduction of energy resources by 2030s–40s [3]. The major challenges that are related to the usage of conventional energy sources are the extent of pollution, greenhouse gas emission in the environment, etc. The sector-wise emissions of greenhouse gas in the world during the years 1990–2015 are represented in Table 2. The major contribution of CO 2 emissions is electricity and heat production areas as compared to manufacturing and other sectors [4]. Electricity is required for the plantation as well as tea production. In plantations, electricity is required for several agricultural practices mainly for irrigation and in the case of tea production, it is required to operate the machinery. Thermal energy (heat) is required only in tea industries for moisture removal from the tea leaves during withering and drying. Tables 1 and 3 represent the comparative energy requirements among the key plantation crops and it reveals that tea plantation crops require the highest energy as compared to rubber and coffee. The tea cultivation and industry require 0.679 kWh of electrical energy and 28.39 MJ of thermal energy for producing one kg of tea [5]. In tea plantations and industries, conventional fuels such as coal, diesel are used to meet their energy requirements and these energy sources pollute the environment. These conventional fuels may be replaced by suitable renewable energy resources to encounter the energy demand in tea plantations and industries. The main objectives of this manuscript are to explore the feasibility of renewable energy sources to satisfy the energy requirement of tea plantations and industries, and challenges involved in the implementation of the same. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: krk@ces.iitd.ac.in (K.R. Kumar). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/rser https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.111083 Received 12 July 2020; Received in revised form 30 March 2021; Accepted 5 April 2021