In Rwanda, the government is promoting a project to produce biogas in schools, prisons and rural areas in order to limit the consumption of charcoal and wood, which are causing dramatic deforestation.
In Rwanda, the government has promoted an initiative to move away from using charcoal and wood for cooking, replacing them with biogas derived from the processing of organic waste and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). This is a way of limiting deforestation, which is becoming a concrete problem both because of the damage it causes to agriculture and the hydrogeological instability it triggers.
The Rwandan government has promoted biogas-powered systems beginning with the country's schools. It was involved in conceiving the project and also took charge of building the infrastructure needed to implement it, leaving the schools responsible only for secondary maintenance of the systems. The underlying idea is to use organic waste to produce biogas by constructing underground concrete biological pits where the waste is collected and, through the action of bacteria, converted into fertiliser. The process generates methane, an odourless biogas that is piped through a tube system to the kitchens.
The project has already brought tangible benefits to schools. The Kanombe Efotec Institute, for example, has gone from using around 330 kilograms of firewood a day to cook meals for more than a thousand students to using a third less, while also reducing its fuel consumption. Not all schools, however, have managed to implement the government's programme. Biogas systems present a number of challenges, including having enough organic waste to produce methane and having access to water to push the waste into the collection pits. Despite this, more than 80 schools across Rwanda — as well as all the country's prisons — are today using biogas for cooking.
The biogas system developed in Rwanda for many of the country's schools seeks to address a major environmental problem: deforestation. Trees are felled primarily to produce charcoal and firewood for cooking, but in doing so the soil becomes depleted, putting agricultural activities at risk and at the same time contributing to an increase in the number of landslides that occur especially in the country's mountainous areas. By promoting renewable energy for cooking, the government hopes to halve the country's dependence on biomass.
Many households are also turning to similar systems. The cost, however, represents a significant barrier, particularly for Rwanda's poorer families. The government has sought to encourage the uptake of this energy source by training more than 400 masons, supervisors and appliance manufacturers, thereby also helping to create jobs in rural areas. At the same time, it has also made liquefied petroleum gas cheaper: although derived from fossil fuels, it is less damaging than felling precious forests. Charcoal can cost around 36,000 francs a month for a family, but because it is bought in small quantities people do not realise that in the long run it is more expensive than LPG.