Majority of households in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) cook with charcoal and/or firewood using inefficient stoves. This leads to high consumption of wood fuel as well as exposure to the negative effects of indoor air pollution, which disproportionately affects women and children. Concurrently, the rural population in SSA depends on agriculture, which faces the challenges of low soil fertility and high cost of mineral fertilizers. This brief presents an innovative way of cooking with an improved and more efficient gasifier stove that converts biomass to heat for cooking while producing biochar as a by-product. Cooking with the gasifier reduces fuel consumption and indoor air pollution. In addition, biochar, when used as a soil amendment, improves soil fertility leading to increased crop yields. The effect of biochar on soil fertility can last for over a decade (Kätterer et al., 2019); use of biochar for soil improvement stores carbon underground, thus resulting in carbon dioxide removal, and mitigating the effects of climate change (Sundberg et al., 2020). This novel bioenergy-biochar system should thus be included in agriculture, energy, gender and climate change policies for improved socio-ecological farming systems.
Publication year
2020
Authors
Njenga, M.; Sundberg, C.; Gitau, J.K.; Mahmoud, Y.; De Nowina, K.R.; Mendum, R.; Karltun, E.
Language
English
Keywords
biochar, ecology, environmental impact, bioenergy
