The government of Kenya’s aiming at exploring and promoting new sources of energy like geothermal power, coal, renewable energy sources, and also connecting Kenya to energy-surplus countries in the region, the Ministry of Agriculture has said.
The Ministry of Agriculture states that Energy Act 2006, article 101 sections 2 – gives the Ministry of Energy an open field in scaling the country’s energy output: “The minister shall promote the development and use of renewable energy including promoting international co-operation on programs focusing on renewable energy sources,” it sates.
The minister of Agriculture Dr Sally Kosigei says Agriculture Sector Development Strategy (ASDS) 2010-2020 strategy policy document emphasizes, encourages on programs aimed at promoting alternative source of energy such as solar, wind, biogas, geothermal, woodlots and hydropower.
According to the Ministry of Energy Kenya’s level of access to modern energy remain low. Only 16 percent of the population has access to electricity, about 90 percent rely on biomass (firewood, charcoal) to meet their basic energy needs.
The ministry says the vast majority has no or inadequate access to affordable modern energy, thus relying on either unsustainable tradition (biomass) or expensive conventional sources such as kerosene, Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) among others.
Nevertheless, less than half of the biomass consumption comes from natural forests or forest plantation. According to the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), the sustainable biomass energy supply was estimated to be 15.4 million tones against a demand estimated at over 38.1 million tons in 2004, reflecting a supply/demand deficit of about 60 percent.
As a result, NEMA says deforestation on a large scale threatens biodiversity, leads to erosion and soil degradation as well as silting of rivers and dams, increases the vulnerability to flooding and jeopardizes the water supply of ecosystems and human settlements.
“State of the world’s forests 2009” Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the total remaining forest cover of Kenya at 3522 million ha or 6.2 percent of the land area. From 1990 to 2005, Kenya lost 170 million ha or 5 percent which represents 0.3 percent annually.
FAO says the diminishing forest cover has an indirect impact on regional stability and conflict potential arising from the distribution of water resources: the eight Kenyan influent rivers to Lake Victoria account for the bulk of water inflow from rivers to the lake. Their water levels are directly related to their catchment areas in the Kenyan forests. Other than the internationals dimension of this problem, further conflict potential is attributed to the localized impacts of swindling river water levels as a result of deforestation caused by harvesting of solid fuels.
Furthermore, the ministry of Agriculture says substantial health hazards arise from traditional forms of biomass usage three stone fire lead to health hazards from indoor air pollution.
According to the World Health Organization, three diseases can be lined to smoke from solid fuels in developing countries, namely child pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 2.7 percent of the total global burden of disease to indoor air pollution. In addition, inadequate waste management yields health, by providing breeding grounds for pests and diseases.
“In Kenya, there are about 2,000,000 households with zero-grazing units and who has potential to contributing to reversing the continuing environmental degradation and inaccessibility to modern energy for rural communities,” the minister says, adding that by converting animal waste into biogas for cooking and other energy needs this can greatly help alleviate the continued dependence on un-unsustainable and expensive sources of energy. “Biogas and in addition to supplying sustainable energy sources has significant effects on improvement of sanitation and soil conditioning further addressing crop productivity issues and control of soil erosion.”
The ministry of Agriculture says that the biogas technology was introduced in Kenya the mid-1950s, with the first experiment undertaken using the waste from coffee pulping facilities.
The ministry explains that in the 1980s the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in collaboration with the Ministry of Energy under the Special Energy Program began biogas promotion in the Country.
The Special Energy programs focused on the floating drum type digesters with approximately 400 units constructed. Over the years, other national and international organizations in collaboration with trained Kenyan technicians have built hundreds of digesters.
“It is important to note that despite this early history, the adoption rate in the country has been quite low,” the ministry says.
The ministry articulates that in 2005, the Promotion of Private Sector Development in Agriculture (PSDA) decided to reintroduce the biogas promotion and within its program. The fixed dome model was preferred due to its stability and long life.
Later in 2008 and with co-funding from the European Union (EU) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the biogas activities targeting smallholder livestock farmers was up scaled. The EU provided 68 percent (1.3million euros) of the funding and the balance was provided by BMZ.
In Kenya today the domestic biogas industry has grown and the demand has risen. Other players in the biogas market are the Ministry of Energy through energy centers, other private players and last year the SNV of Netherlands launched a Kenya National Domestic Biogas Program me aimed at reaching 8,000 units in four years.
PROMOTION OF PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT IN AGRICULTURE (PSDA)
It is on this premise that the ministry of Agriculture is agitating the Promotion of Private Sector Development in Agriculture (PSDA) which is a bilateral technical assistance programs jointly implemented by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GIZ) on behalf of the Government of Germany and the Ministry of Agriculture on behalf of the Government of Kenya.
It closely collaborates with other agricultural sector Ministries, mainly the Ministry of Livestock Development, Fisheries Development and the Ministry of Cooperative Development and Marketing and other Stakeholders in Kenya focusing on capacity building and technology transfer of biogas technology.
One of the objectives of GIZ PSDA program is to provide rural farmers, pastoralists and other beneficiaries with improved living conditions and adequate supply of energy through use of biogas energy technology.
The technical assistance program was started in October 2003 and is expected to run for 12 years up to 2015. As from January 2011, the program has moved into its fourth phase following a successful Program Progress Review (PPR) that was done early 2010. The 4th Phase will run from 2011 to 2013.
According to the ministry of Agriculture the programmer’s current geographical coverage is in high and medium potential areas in parts of Central, Eastern, Nyanza, Rift Valley and Western provinces with high population density and high levels of poverty. The orientation for the 4th phase is however country wide with more focus of Western Kenya.
The objective of the program, the ministry says is to enable men and women running small and medium agricultural production and processing enterprises in the high and medium potential areas to fully utilize their production and market potential while managing their natural resource base in a sustainable Manner.
THE PSDA BIOGAS PROJECT
The ministry of Agriculture says PSDA project started in 2005 and later attracted EU support in January 2008 to support the scaling up of the initiative to provide small to medium level rural dairy farmers and other beneficiaries with improved living conditions and adequate supply of energy through use of biogas energy technology.
This was expected to translate into establishment of a pool of competent construction companies and artisans for Biogas plant construction, designing and making available appropriate technical specifications of various sizes to suit different clients and consumer awareness and education.
In addition to backstopping up scaling and generation of manuals and other related knowledge materials and development of appropriate standards for Biogas plants, equipment and appliances among others as they targeted smallholder livestock farmers with zero-grazing units of 3 to 70 animals.
ACHIEVEMENT AND BENEFITS
By April 2011, the PSDA project had seen more 300 artisans trained on biogas construction.
About 30 biogas units of various sizes (distributed as follows: 40 percent are 16 cubic meters (cbm), 30 percent12 cbm, 14 percent are 32cbm and the rest (16 percent)are shared among 8, 24, 48,54,70, 90 and 124cbm).
The ministry of Agriculture says Six clients have installed biogas units above 124cbm and the gas used to run engines for water pumping for irrigation and other uses, example brooding. Biogas remains a major potential energy source, off-grid of stand-alone systems to support agricultural systems.
The ministry says the installed capacity has biogas production capacity of more than 1.5 million cubic meters of gas in a year valued at Ksh 36 million per year (LPG gas cost equivalent). Since the lifespan of the biogas plant is beyond 15 years, gross value is estimated at KSh 500 million.
“The use of biogas from these plants is contributing to a saving of trees (forests) to more than 40 hectares per year, grossly translating to 600 hectares in 15 years,” the minister says. “Other benefits include savings of foreign exchange for mineral fertilizers, kerosene and gas importations.”
Un-quantified benefits are also realized in crop productivity and reduction of air door pollution, Dr Kosigei further says. “A general analysis gives a total direct investment of Ksh 100million towards installation of the 500 biogas plants, with farmers contributing more than 80 percent of these costs and only about 20 percent provided as subsidy by the project.”
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
“Vast amounts of knowledge were acquired during project implementation,” she says. “The knowledge will be packaged and distributed through extension offices, contracting firms and website (PSDA, EU and MOA).”
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