Research article - Peer-reviewed, 2020
Environmental Sustainability of Bioenergy Strategies in Western Kenya to Address Household Air Pollution
Carvalho, Ricardo Luis; Yadav, Pooja; Garcia-Lopez, Natxo; Lindgren, Robert; Nyberg, Gert; Diaz-Chavez, Rocio; Upadhyayula, Venkata Krishna Kumar; Boman, Christoffer; Athanassiadis, DimitrisAbstract
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.Keywords
agroforestry; waste valorization; sustainable development goals; renewable energy; bioenergy transitions; circular bioeconomy; clean cooking; life-cycle assessment; energy policyPublished in
Energies2020, volume: 13, number: 3, article number: 719
Publisher: MDPI
Authors' information
Carvalho, Ricardo Luis
Univ Aveiro
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Biomaterials and Technology
Garcia-Lopez, Natxo
Umea Univ
Lindgren, Robert
Umea Univ
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Ecology and Management
Diaz-Chavez, Rocio
World Agroforestry Ctr
Upadhyayula, Venkata Krishna Kumar
Umea Univ
Boman, Christoffer
Umea Univ
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Biomaterials and Technology
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG7 Affordable and clean energy
UKÄ Subject classification
Bioenergy
Publication Identifiers
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/en13030719
URI (permanent link to this page)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/105302