Kenya needs sustainable biofuel projects

Last month, Unep issued an enlightening report titled: Towards Sustainable Production and Use of Resources: Assessing Biofuels (www.unep.fr).

The report gives guidance mainly to policy-makers on wider and interrelated factors needed to be considered when deciding on relative merits of pursuing one biofuel over another.

The report discusses roles of biofuels on the wider climate change agenda, impacts on agriculture, croplands, fresh water and biodiversity.

Each country has varying justifications for biofuels programmes, and each country has differing impacts.

For policy makers, it helps to develop a comprehensive biofuels programme that is thoroughly debated and evaluated for value addition to the economy and that has reduced negative social environmental impacts.

Transport fuels

The report emphasises bio-energy and bio-mass of which bio-fuels are one feature that is applied mainly as transportation fuels.

For most of developing countries biomass (for example firewood and charcoal ) will remain the main form of energy demand for cooking and heating and emphasis should be on how efficiently bio-mass is applied, and how the forest cover is managed and maintained.

Afforestation, reforestation, agro-forestry, charcoal development policies all supplement the rural bio-energy requirements for developing countries.

On transport bio-fuels, the report singles out the US, Brazil and the EU as the main producers.

USA has a stated policy of increasing biofuels use as a way of diversifying away from imported fossil fuels from politically volatile regions so as to increase security of supply.

Brazil was driven to develop a successful and sustainable biofuels programme in the mid 70s to redress the high cost of imported oil and has to date maintained this strategy.

EU has embarked on biofuels strategy driven primarily by Kyoto Protocol compliance on Green House Gases reduction.

The report lists Malawi as one of the countries currently producing bio-ethanol.

Yes, Malawi together with Kenya in the early 80s and in response to the high oil prices caused by the Iranian oil crisis successfully implemented sugar to bio-ethanol programmes that included a 10 per cent blend of alcohol in petrol.

To date Malawi has sustained a 10 per cent alcohol blend in petrol while Kenya fell by the wayside on their gasohol programme in the late 80s.

The Malawi biofuels programme has been sustainably integrated into the country’s mainstream agriculture and economy.

With the recent success stories emanating from Malawi on their agricultural bounty, one cannot say there is a conflict between food production and biofuels production in Malawi.

A country can in deed decide and plan to get out of food crisis, and incrementally go ahead with bio-energy projects.

As oil prices escalated this decade, there was doom prediction of peak oil and prices of up to US$ 200 per barrel, and many countries abruptly came up with new interest in biofuels to replace expensive and depleting imported oil.

As those countries gradually learn to live with high prices, focus on biofuels seems to have waned.

Oil prices will always go up and down and unless consistent and sustainable biofuels strategies are developed countries will always be on a start-stop mode.

The UNEP report encourages sound policies and planning that take into account population growth, food crop yield improvement and of course climate change in developing long term sustainability of the bio-energy sector.

Bio-energy programmes should not be in competition with food crops.

But countries like Brazil and Malawi have shown that food and bio-energy can be developed in tandem.

Food self sufficiency has of course to be achieved first and foremost and biofuels programmes should be incremental to a successful agricultural base.

A recent report from Ethiopia points to ambitious plans to develop biofuels to replace imported oil and to improve security of supply, Ethiopia being a land-locked country.

With the reported perennial droughts and famines in Ethiopia one would wonder whether food production and not biofuels should be the priority.

In Kenya the declared policy is that biofuels will be developed in arid and semi-arid areas which will not be in direct competition with food production.

Agriculture minister William Ruto has repeatedly asserted that Kenya can by choice and action become a giant food producer.

In the long term therefore, a bio-ethanol strategy can be incrementally developed alongside a successful sugar development programme, and a bio-diesel strategy can incrementally ride on vegetable oil production.

It is a question of developing joint long term food and bio-energy strategies that are well resourced.

In Kenya , in the short term a lot of interest has been aroused on bio-diesel mini projects with the introduction of Jatropha in the rural areas.

This interest needs to be nurtured and supported with good research backup.

Rural based bio-diesel projects do have social economic benefits, and can mobilise gainful employment, especially in semi-arid areas.

Last year we read of the Narumoru (in Nyeri) effort where NGOs and CBOs have developed a programme for bio-diesel out of croton (Mukinduri) seeds.

Croton is a tree with numerous agro-forestry benefits as it also provides firewood, and can be useful in afforestation efforts and does not compete with food production.

Of course we have the commercial growers (mainly foreign companies) who wish to invest in large scale bio-diesel production for exports to countries under Kyoto Protocol obligations.

With proper land use guidelines and social environmental impact assessments these businesses should be facilitated, as they will give residual benefits to this country.

We should however avoid pitfalls that we have read about in Tanzania recently where large scale foreign commercial bio-fuels growers are already in social conflicts with local communities.

We are under pressure globally to come up with measures to mitigate climate change by replacing fossil fuels with bio-fuels.

We are also under pressure to replace expensive imported oil with locally produced energy alternatives and increase food production as we contend with perpetual droughts caused by climate change.

These then are the reasons why various ministries in a government should consult when developing long term policies touching on energy, food production and environmental protection.

Mr Wachira is a consultant with Petroleum Focus Consultants. Email: wachira@petroleumfocus.com