Ugandan company takes the frontline in the fight against deforestation and emissions.

Seeing the wood for the trees in Uganda

Ugandan social enterprise Eco Fuel Africa (EFA) has come up with an innovative method for turning agricultural waste into clean biomass energy, leading the way on how to cope with emissions and rampant deforestation from wood fuel usage in this agriculturally dependent East African nation.

 EFA uses coffee husks, corn cobs, ground nut shells, sugarcane waste, and rice husks to make clean and affordable briquettes. The briquettes are a carbon-neutral cooking fuel that functions the same as wood fuel, but is highly efficient, cleaner, smokeless, and burns longer. They address one of the largest causes of emissions and deforestation, while also improving household health in Uganda.

“I got the idea of making briquettes when I visited my home village in rural western Uganda and found that my sister had missed school because she had to walk long distances to collect firewood,” says Moses Sanga, the director of EFA. “The trees that surrounded our home were gone, and she had to walk longer distances to gather firewood. I had to find a solution.” But this was not the only thing Sanga noticed in his hometown. “There was plenty of litter everywhere,” he says. “Uganda is primarily agricultural, but farm waste is just abandoned.” It was then that Sanga began researching and learning everything he could about turning organic agricultural waste into fuel.

Armed with a bachelor’s degree in finance and with the help of engineering students from Makerere, Uganda’s leading university, he embarked on a mission to design kilns and briquetting machines using oil drums. This led to the founding of EFA in April 2010.

How it happens

The locally-made kilns carbonise agricultural waste to create char. The briquetting machines use high pressures to mould loose char into compact and solid fuel briquettes that can be used for cooking, boiling water, or heating rooms. EFA provides training to marginalized rural farmers on how to turn their agricultural waste into char.

After the training, they are offered a chance to take home a kiln on a lease-to-own basis. “We are currently working with 3,500 farmers who use our kilns,” says Sanga. “About 80% of the produced char is sold directly to EFA and each farmer earns at least $30 (€26.8) per month in additional income. 
EFA then presses the char into cleanburning fuel briquettes.” The farmers are also trained on how to mix the biochar with local organic nutrients to make fertiliser, which they then put in their gardens. This has helped them increase their food harvests by more than 50% ensuring food security and reduced malnutrition. EFA also works with a network of female micro retailers that sell the briquettes to end-user customers. Selected women are trained for three days and at the end of the training, EFA builds each of them a kiosk to use as a retail shop to sell briquettes in their local communities. Already, EFA has created a network of 2,000 female retailers in Uganda. Each of these women retailers earns at least $152 per month. “By using agricultural waste, we are creating clean, affordable and accessible energy, helping to create socially and economically thriving communities,” says Sanga.

EFA currently provides fuel for more than 115,000 Ugandan families and is responsible for saving 500,000 acres of forests in averted deforestation. It also sells its products to institutions like schools, hospitals, hotels, and restaurants. “Our goal is to provide clean cooking fuel to every energy-poor household in Uganda by 2020 and a 150,000 tonne reduction in CO2 emissionsper year,” Sanga concludes. Another company helping Ugandans embrace clean energy is Pamoja Cleantech, also specialising in waste-toenergy projects. It converts waste products into high energy density fuel pellets for industrial and domestic use. The firm also makes energy-efficient cooking stoves and operates microgrids powered by biomass fuels for direct electricity distribution in rural areas.

Government support

The government of Uganda has long regarded biomass energy as a viable option for clean energy generation. Uganda’s Renewable Energy Policy was put in place to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy mix from the current 4% to 61% of the total energy consumption by 2017. The policy recognises biomass as a significant source of modern, clean forms of energy with potential to contribute to Uganda’s energy sector development. The government has also put in place a legal and institutional framework to attract private investments in development of modern energy forms. This includes the introduction of specific tax regimes that favour modern energy, such as preferential tax treatment and tax exemption. According to statistics from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, Uganda’s energy consumption matrix currently stands at 90% biomass, 7% petroleum products, and 2% electricity produced from hydro and thermal power plants. The majority of the population relies on wood based fuels in forms of firewood and charcoal as a main source of energy for cooking. This has led to massive environmental degradation and health hazards among households. According to the Uganda Demographic Health Survey (2006), cooking with wood fuel is a major cause of respiratory illnesses such as lung cancer among Ugandans, given that it emits a lot of smoke and affects the quality of air in a household. Worse still, using biomass hugely depends on traditional technologies such as three-stone fireplaces and charcoal stoves that are quite inefficient in their fuel utilisation, leading to excessive use and demand for firewood.

According to Godfrey Ndawula, the Commissioner of Renewable Energy in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, 18 million tonnes of firewood is burned every year, resulting in deforestation on a massive scale. “EFA will help us save our forests and avert the 13,000 reported premature deaths resulting from indoor air pollution,” he says.

‘Need to raise awareness’

Despite its important economic and social role, uptake of modern biomass energy is still low in Uganda. According to a Ministry of Energy report on Uganda’s biomass energy situation, the country’s main challenge is not the supply of biomass but rather lack of awareness among the masses on modern forms biomass energy and lack of the appropriate technologies. Therefore, there is a need for intensive promotion and marketing both in urban and rural areas to increase uptake of modern biomass energy alternatives. “We need to raise awareness of the new improved biomass energy and environmentally-friendly cook stoves to reduce firewood consumption and global emissions,” Ndawula says. Biomass energy is also yet to receive recognition and prioritisation in terms of funding from government compared to other renewables such as hydro energy, which impedes its development. Uganda typically generates almost half of its modern energy output from hydropower dams along the River Nile. 
The micro-scale social enterprises that form the bulk of investment in the biomass energy subsector face a number of challenges, including maintaining appropriate financial and human resources to sustain operations, and cannot afford market development costs. Traditional financing through commercial banks or commercial lending institutions has not been a viable option for many of these enterprises. The inability to predict monthly sales, the lack of collateral and credit history, and the large informal economy mean that commercial banks hesitate to provide loans to businesses.
 However, the Ugandan government has established the Uganda Energy Credit Capitalization Company (UECCC) to assist micro-project developers interested in doing business in the biomass energy subsector in Uganda in attaining financial closure. Social enterprises are also looking to take advantage of the green climate fund and carbon financing in order to acquire funds and engage in product marketing and promotion, to help rural communities. “If biomass waste-to-energy projects are scaled up, it could allow rural Ugandans to embrace cleaner cooking methods that protect the environment,” says Ronald Kaggwa, an environmental economist at the Uganda National Environmental Management Authority. He adds: “If the country could turn more of its waste into energy, it would also bring it closer to its goals of switching to greener energy sources and reducing deforestation.”

According to Lighting Africa, a World Bank group programme to increase access to clean sources of energy, Africa has a large off-grid population. More than 590 million people live with no connection to their national electricity grid, exposing them to hazardous options. This is an indicator that biomass will continuously play an important role in Africa’s energy sector. Investment in efficient, clean and less polluting modern biomass energy should be a priority if Africa’s emissions are to be curbed and forest cover conserved.

dianakarakire@gamil.comx