Advanced BioFuels USA

by Colin Ley (Biofuels International) Assessing the state on biofuels development across Africa with any degree of accuracy or fairness is always a challenge, given the vastness and diversity of the continent.

The complexity of the task is even greater at the moment as the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacts on previous plans for Africa’s transition away from fossil fuels as the world seeks ‘short-term’ alternatives to Russian oil and gas.

While it is certainly possible to conclude that substantial points of progress are being made by some African countries, it is also true that the size of the transition challenge can make it seem that almost nothing is taking place in others.

Massive demands

Even in countries or regions where good advances are being made, the extent to which new projects are being successfully managed is invariably dwarfed by the scale of the marketplace, with its ability to keep absorbing more and more new energy.

Take the Africa Biogas Partnership Programme (ABPP), for example. Launched in 2009 with the aim of developing a viable biodigester market in Sub Saharan Africa, the programme initially covered Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda, although Senegal subsequently left to set up its own programme in 2019.

When assessed in 2021, it was calculated that more than 38,000 biogas digesters had been successfully installed under ABPP.

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While the IRENA report acknowledged that these developments ‘indicate the potential of biogas in Sub-Saharan Africa’ the agency’s statistics also revealed that the number of Africans cooking with biogas was an estimated 410,000 in 2019, which amounts to less than 0.5% of Africa’s potential biogas ‘audience’.

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So, how is it all going? That was the question Biofuels International put to Power Shift Africa (PSA) who describe themselves as a ‘think tank providing cutting-edge analysis, solution-focused policy ideas, and up-to-the minute media engagement from an African perspective’.

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“Since Russia invaded Ukraine, however, this has made European countries look for alternative sources of energy away from Russian gas. In the short term, this is leading towards Africa, even though we have plenty of our own energy needs and priorities. It will be counterproductive, in fact, if the EU invests hugely in Africa to serve member countries’ short term (non-Russian) needs while effectively locking Africa into a trajectory that will be carbon-intensive in the near future and also not beneficial in the long term as the world in general moves away from fossil fuels.

“Africa’s energy needs and priorities must come first even while we partner together and try to find solutions to the situation as it now stands in Europe. The EU should be thinking of reducing its consumption of fossil fuels, gas and so on, eventually moving away from fossil fuels and investing instead in renewables.”

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On biofuels specifically, Wemanya said that one of the challenges facing Africa is that a huge part of the continent’s population do not have access to clean cooking options.

“We need to find solutions to this,” he said, “especially with some of the challenges that are associated with the continued use of polluting and unhealthy fuels. People have certainly been discussing investments in biofuel based solutions, but this hasn’t happened yet.”

With so many countries making up the continent of Africa, of course, there is also always a need to address cross-border energy transfer processes.

“This would help in sharing the resources which are available, so that whatever is produced in Kenya, for example, can also be supplied to Tanzania or help Mozambique and Malawi and Uganda,” said Wemanya. “Establishing regional energy pools of this type is very important.”

Ethanol opportunities
On the transport front, meanwhile, the role which can be played by ethanol in the developing fuel mix, continues to warrant attention. While slow-moving in terms of ethanol usage in the past, the continent’s emergence from Covid-19 restrictions is viewed by the US Grains Council (USGC) as creating good new opportunities.

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“As a result,” it said, “this rapidly growing African fuels market will be an enabler to creating an E10 policy environment and regulatory change for those countries that the Council is heavily engaged in, such as Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa.”
USGC has already been hard at work in Africa this year, running trade missions to Ghana and Nigeria, complete with visits with industry groups, oil traders, oil marketing companies and sector associations. READ MORE