The benefits and potential impacts of household cooking fuel substitution with bio-ethanol produced from cassava feedstock in Nigeria

Abstract

The major cooking fuels in Nigeria, which are fuel wood and kerosene, face supply difficulties, price instabilities, safety, health and environmental challenges. In response to these challenges, the Federal Government of Nigeria recently announced the partial replacement of these cooking fuels with bio-ethanol produced from cassava in a project called ‘cassakero’. The project involves the installation of 10,000micro-scale bio-refineries across the country with a combined capacity of 4millionliters per day. The project includes the establishment of a 400,000ha cassava farm to supply cassava feedstock to the ethanol refineries. Though the detailed design of the project is not yet available, the aim of this paper is to appraise the project with the aim of highlighting the benefits of the project for enhancement while emphasizing the potential negative impacts for mitigation. The results of the appraisal revealed that the project will be beneficial in terms of job creation, boost rural agriculture, conserve forest from fuel wood exploitation, alleviate poverty and prevent indoor pollution. The impact of the project on greenhouse gas emission is ambiguous. While the shift to ethanol cooking fuel will release less CO2 comparatively, the conversion of 400,000ha of forest to cassava farm, the use of fossil fuel for processing cassava tubers to ethanol, fermentation of cassava starch and the use of agro-chemicals will release CO2 as well. Other potential negative impacts of the project include large input of water and energy and the production of large volume of waste stream, which need to be handled. There is a potential food versus fuel conflict, especially if the current production of cassava is not scaled up to meet the several emerging projects in Nigeria requiring cassava feedstock.