Introduction
For this project I am doing biogas, most farmers in Uganda don’t make use of the animal waste to generate energy for their household use. Having a biogas digester would give farmers power which they can use for lighting and cooking. The digester produces bio-slurry which serves as organic manure for their crops. Therefore biogas would be the most efficient and accessible form of energy in the rural areas which constitute 80% of the population of Uganda since the animal waste is available to them at no financial cost.
Defining the Problem
The population of Uganda is 35,918,915, eighty percent of Ugandans are farmers (CIA World Fact book).Only 25 percent of Ugandans have access to the power grid, the remaining 75 percent have to rely on renewable energy (biomass and kerosene). A survey by BareFoot power has shown that majority of the 75 percent who don’t have access to power are in rural areas. In rural areas only 2 percent have access to electricity, out of which less than half is provided from the national grid, the rest coming from household generators, car batteries and solar PV units. Citizens in rural areas have to provide power for themselves which signifies energy poverty. A representative from BareFoot Power said people in rural areas spend about 20,000 Ugandan shillings each month on kerosene, this equates to 240,000 Ugandan shillings every year (Ugandans have no access to power). Only 7 percent of Ugandans have access to modern cooking energy (Uganda-EnDev), most of which are located in the urban areas.
Having power in rural areas is very important because it improves the living standard of the country and also brings about economic development and sustainable growth. Access to energy in rural areas is beyon...
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...ss to Power." Sunday Monitor. Sunday Monitor, 5 Oct. 2012. Web. 22 Mar. 2014. .
SNV. "Renewable Energy- Promoting Use of Clean Energy for Cooking and Lighting." SNV World. SNV, 2012. Web. 16 Mar. 2014. .
UNBP. Cook & Light with Biogas and Boost Your Agriculture Production. Kampala: UNBP, 2012. Print.
World Bank. "Rural Electrification." World Bank. Independent Evaluation Group, 2011. Web. 23 Mar. 2014..
Villagers use firewood, which they get, from community forests where each community has its own allocation of wood. Buffalo and cow dung mixed with water and then fed into a reactor is used to provide villagers with biogas.
2. The per capita rural consumption of household energy in some Bangladesh villages is 7 x 109 J/year.
As the global population increases exponentially, having passed six billion in 1999, the world population is expected to be 8.9 billion by the year 2050. The worlds energy consumption will increase by an estimated 54 percent by 2025. Energy demand in the industrialized world is projected to grow 1.2 percent per year. Energy is a critical component of sustained economic growth and improved standards of living. One of the major requirements for sustaining human progress is an adequate source of energy. As the world’s technological enhancements and standards of living improve, so too does their appetite for electricity.
FROM observation we have come to know, that more than 1.5 billion people around the world have little or no access to light due to shortage or unavailability of electricity. Large numbers of affected people are from rural areas, and to a certain extent people from urban areas are also getting griped into energy crises. Statistics from United Nations says, that an investment of about US$35 billion to 40 billion per year is required to provide electrical energy to accomplish consumer basic need of energy for light, cook and mobility. Even after such heavy investment 16% of the world’s population will still not have electricity by the year 2030 (International Energy Agency).
“According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations’ global hunger data, more than 10% – about 800 million people – are undernourished and do not have enough food to lead healthy, active lives (Farmers Weekly). Global food shortages are a day to day issue that all organisms on Earth suffers. Biofuels are a huge part of global food shortages because it is made from the oils of plants which could be converted into food. Biofuels are produced from plants that are burned in furnaces or diesel engines. The the oil from those burned plants is mixed with petroleum, furthermore this process creates biofuels. Biofuels mainly consist of corn which could be used as food instead. Farming techniques are very important to the food shortages too. Without proper farming techniques crops wouldn’t be growing as well as the plants are today. Hydroponics can help this
In the world of global warming, all kinds of pollution and fuel shortages going on, renewable and clean/ green energy is increasingly the ideal solution of energy related problems we have to solve one way or another. Biofuel is one of the mainstream and highly supported solutions nowadays, an idea to make renewable fuel by living organisms such as fiber, corn, vegetable oil or sugar cane. Unlike nonrenewable fossil fuels over extracted by people causing various environmental problems like generating a considerable amount greenhouse gas, current technology already lets renewable fuel like biofuels to shrink a certain amount of greenhouse gas production, making it a more ‘clean’ source of energy.
Clay, Rebecca. "Renewable Energy: Empowering the Developing World." Environmental Health Perspectives 110.1 (2002): A30. GreenFILE. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
The production of briquettes from sawdust and other agro-residues exemplifies the potential of appropriate technology for the utilisation of biomass residues which abound in large quantities in developing countries. However, compared to developed countries where successful briquette operations are mostly found, briquettes have not been widely adopted in developing countries due to the high cost of production, lack of awareness on its sustainability, lack of ready market and poor packaging and distribution systems for the product Emerhi, EA (2011) In Ghana, commercial production of sawdust briquette started in 1984. The production could not be sustained due to operational, marketing and standardisation challenges, though the briquettes had high prospect as an alternative to firewood and charcoal. However, accordingto Oladeji, JT (2010)besides overcoming marketing and operational challenges, if agro-waste briquettes are to be used efficiently as fuel, they must be characterised
Though there is a promising future for the Ugandan economy if all the stakeholders appreciate the potential for solar technology, there are still some challenges towards widespread use of his technology. Some of these challenges include: limited capacity of the private sector to procure PV systems in large quantities so as to benefit from economies of scale, lack of enough information on the benefits of solar PV and low levels of affordability in the rural areas especially due to the high upfront costs associated.
Africa’s most populous country is in an energy crisis and without any improvements, there will be various problems relating to policy, infrastructure, and raising capital. Although Nigeria is one of the most advanced in oil and gas reserves, the energy crisis is hindering the growth and development of the country. The lack of infrastructure and a strong power sector has left the population with an unreliable power source. Mutiat Adeyemo, an
Biogas technology has more positive impacts than negative ones in developing countries. It has reduced air pollution and improved hygienic conditions of developing countries. It has reduced environmental pollution by reducing the amount of carbon and its compounds in the atmosphere. Young girls have been empowered in society and education has been promoted. The technology has saved on costs by offering an alternative means of waste disposal and as a cheap source of energy. Finally, biogas technology has boosted agriculture by offering as an alternative to chemical fertilizers.
By installing 5m3 biogas plants, a rural area can save 5150PKR monthly in Pakistan (Abbas, 2012). Biogas production needs less capital investment per unit cost compare with renewable energy sources i.e. the wind, hydro and solar etc. in small scale. In Pakistan, electricity is the most expensive and natural gas the cheapest way for cooking. The domestic biogas plants generate 5 to 7 times more expensive energy as comparatively natural gas. However, there is no doubt that natural gas cheapest sources but it are not available everywhere in the country. The government provides a 25 % subsidy to install biogas plants, in rural areas where is limited access to other energy sources in overcoming energy crisis. The Pakistan Council for Renewable Energy Technology granted Rs 89.2 million PKR for promoting the biogas technology to meet the energy demand in rural areas and the production of bio-fertilizer (Abbas,
Food waste is huge issue these days. It is a huge amount of waste that ends up in landfills and can have lasting effects on the environment. One of major issues of food waste is the greenhouse gases that it produces. Methane gas is the main culprit when it comes to the gases being released. This can absorb infrared radiation and heat up the earth’s atmosphere and cause climate change. Another issue that food waste causes is, water loss due to use for production of fruits and vegetables.
Gasifier technology has been customized for a range of direct heat application and tested successfully in the field. Silk processing, large-cardamom drying, and gasifier-based crematoria are a few examples of the applications worked on at TERI. This technology is slowly replacing both traditional biomass use and gas-powered systems, as it provides an excellent decentralized source of energy at an affordable cost. Apart from rural households, biomass fuels are the primary source of energy for a large number of small, rural and cottage
More farmers are now planting crops for biofuel, resulting to an intense drop in food production. According to experts this promising alternative energy source is seemingly causing a global decrease of food supply. As the demand for biofuels increases, more industrialized countries are offering encouragements and subsidizing farmers to grow crops for fuel rather than for food. The biofuel production method was also anticipated to be carbon neutral, as the crops would absorb the carbon dioxide released when the biofuel was burned. However crops for fuel are now grown at such a rate that they need more energy to cultivate, grow and harvest. By the time it reaches households, it would have consumed more energy and released more greenhouse causing substances than the feared fossil fuels would have. The fact that emissions are released during production, processing, fertilizer application and as a result of land use change is highly ignored. Somehow biofuels can sidetrack less harmful and clean resources like renewable energies such as solar and wind energy. Large scale cultivation of biofuel crops, unlike small scale, locally produced and biofuel owned farms are commonly challenged by problems such as severe use of water, chemicals, fertilizers and pesticides. These also often lead to pollution, depleting and degrading available water resources which can cause famines. According to contrary believe of analysts, it has also shown that there is not enough farming land on earth to produce biofuel crops to meet the huge energy needs encouraged by our current and unmaintainable ways of living. http://www.greenerideal.com/science/0516-biofuels/ &