Environmental Sustainability of Bioenergy Strategies in Western Kenya to Address Household Air Pollution

Ricardo Luís Carvalho,Pooja Yadav,Venkata Krishna Kumar Upadhyayula,Rocio Diaz-Chavez,Dimitris Athanassiadis,Natxo García-López,Christoffer Boman,Robert Lindgren,Gert Nyberg

doi:10.3390/en13030719

Ricardo Luís Carvalho, Pooja Yadav + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/en13030719

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Abstract

Over 640 million people in Africa are expected to rely on solid-fuels for cooking by 2040. In Western Kenya, cooking inefficiently persists as a major cause of burden of disease due to household air pollution. Efficient biomass cooking is a local-based renewable energy solution to address this issue. The Life-Cycle Assessment tool Simapro 8.5 is applied for analyzing the environmental impact of four biomass cooking strategies for the Kisumu County, with analysis based on a previous energy modelling study, and literature and background data from the Ecoinvent and Agrifootprint databases applied to the region. A Business-As-Usual scenario (BAU) considers the trends in energy use until 2035. Transition scenarios to Improved Cookstoves (ICS), Pellet-fired Gasifier Stoves (PGS) and Biogas Stoves (BGS) consider the transition to wood-logs, biomass pellets and biogas, respectively. An Integrated (INT) scenario evaluates a mix of the ICS, PGS and BGS. In the BGS, the available biomass waste is sufficient to be upcycled and fulfill cooking demands by 2035. This scenario has the lowest impact on all impact categories analyzed followed by the PGS and INT. Further work should address a detailed socio-economic analysis of the analyzed scenarios.

Highlights

It is estimated that over 40% of the world’s population is currently relying on solid-fuels for cooking and heating [1]
Considering the limited number of dynamic life-cycle assessment (LCA) studies applied to the developing region context, the present study focuses on conducting an environmental impact assessment of the bioenergy transition strategies previously analyzed in an energy modelling study conducted by Carvalho et al [26]
The present work assumed that all the mass of biomass feedstock analyzed are suitable for an efficient and sustainable conversion to upgraded cooking fuels such as biomass pellets and biogas

Summary

Introduction

It is estimated that over 40% of the world’s population is currently relying on solid-fuels for cooking and heating [1]. Wood and charcoal continue to play a vital role in meeting household energy demands, where it remains accessible and affordable [6,7,8]. Energies 2020, 13, 719 constitutes an important way to address several of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [9,10], contributing to address at least five of the SDGs, including the: (1) Good health and well-being In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), only 35% of the population have access to electricity and 80% of the people rely on traditional firewood, charcoal, animal dung and agricultural residues for cooking [11,12]

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