The race to combat climate change has never been more urgent hence the biogas system among renewable energy options is becoming a path forward. With the increased number of hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, and floods, the transition to clean energy is crucial. Currently, households are encouraged to use clean energy in cooking and farming.
One such is the biogas system. Waste-to-energy can play an essential role in accelerating the energy transition and addressing issues related to waste treatment. Not only will it contribute to reducing waste, but pollution will also be the cause of health problems for women in households that are still using traditional biomass.
Cooking with traditional biomass fuel and inefficient cookstoves puts women disproportionately at health risks associated with household air pollution. In addition, as in many developing countries, the burden of the labor-intensive firewood collection often falls on women’s shoulders, consuming women’s time and energy.
However, biodigesters are expensive, making them difficult for low-income farmers in Kenya to afford. A key challenge to the adoption and continued use of renewable clean cooking fuels and technologies among low-income households is affordability. High costs of equipment and fuel, along with limited access to affordable financing, are major barriers to using bioenergy for clean cooking in countries such as Kenya.
Consequently, in a bid to solve the prevailing factors the government initiated the Kenya National Clean Cooking Strategy to ensure universal access to clean cooking by 2028. The strategy includes leveraging government resource allocations, private sector investments, carbon finance, public finance, philanthropic contributions, and development agency assistance, which could bridge the affordability gap
Instruments such as Results-Based Financing (RBF) are used to make the process efficient. RBF ensures that development funding is linked to pre-agreed and verified results and that funding is provided when the agreed outcomes are achieved. Impact bonds, for example, are a type of RBF that rewards investors for successfully delivering development impact.
Moreover, to speed up the shift to clean cooking technologies and fuels, the Kenyan government introduced the Bioenergy Strategy (2020-2027), aimed at encouraging sustainable bioenergy production and consumption. While this is a positive move, greater efforts are required to implement the strategy and expand bioenergy capacity for clean cooking. As of 2023, biogas power capacity in Kenya had only reached 2 Megawatts.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 7% of rural households cook with clean fuels and technologies, compared to 40% in urban areas. The region remains the only one where the number of people without access is still rising, mainly due to population growth outpacing clean cooking progress. Since biogas digesters have the potential to serve 18.5 million households in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is important to increase bioenergy use for clean cooking
