Potential, environmental, and socio-economic assessment of biogas production in Ethiopia: The case of Amhara regional state

Abstract

Bio-energy is a major energy source providing more than 80% of the energy demand in Ethiopia, particularly in the Amhara regional state. Biogas is the emerging bio-energy in the rural area of the region through biogas development program for potential households. The current biogas digesters are evaluated using onsite data collection in collaboration with the regional biogas program office. The emissions from each stage of the biogas production process are estimated using life cycle approach. The socio-economic benefits from the biogas implementation are addressed considering well-known socio-economic indicators like net present value, payback period, benefit cost ratio, and women's opportunity cost. The results show that there is a huge biogas potential in the region at 223 PJ per annum. Currently, there are about 4500 operational household biogas digesters in the region providing 0.13 PJ per year, only 0.058% of the total theoretical potential. The biogas digesters employed (4500) reduces about 1984 tonnes CO2eq of GHG emissions per year. In addition, other indoor pollutants like CO, NMOC, and PM10 are also reduced at 1517, 108, and 41 tonnes per annum, respectively. The benefit cost ratio of 1.8 and a short payback period (∼2 years) shows that the sector development is promising. The exhaustive utilization of the available cow manure potential will result in women's benefit of about 890,300 US$ per annum. Thus, the sector is very interesting and more efforts from the government and the households can improve the sector to maximize the benefits.