Commonwealth Countries Get Knocked Down, But Get Up Again

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April 16, 2018

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by Helena Tavares Kennedy (Biofuels Digest) With 195 countries on the planet today, an impressive 53 countries are Commonwealth countries, including countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Pacific. They include large, rich countries like Canada and Australia all the way to some of the smallest or poorest countries like Malawi and Sierra Leone. They are all meeting this week at their annual “Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting” in London. But what do many of them have in common, other than all being a Commonwealth, which usually means they were at some point part of the British Empire or a dependency of the British Empire? Why, biofuels course.

With about 2 billion people, more or less, they are an impressive group of countries with huge potential. Some of them were probably knocked down at some point as part of British rule, but they got up again. While we don’t have space to write about all 53 Commonwealth countries, we’ll talk about some really exciting ones we are keeping an eye on in the continents of Africa – we’ll leave the Asia, Pacific, Europe, Caribbean and Americas for another day.

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Malawi is one of Africa’s poorest countries and the only one in the top 10 poorest African countries list that is included in our list of Commonwealth countries in Africa to keep an eye on – why? Because it is one of the world’s least developed nations but agriculture accounts for over 90% of their export revenues and they have shown true promise in biofuels and bioenergy.

While the country has many challenges, they do have financial aid from the World Bank and the IMF, as well as some projects worth noting. For example, ABR Energy is teaming with Press Corp to produce power from ethanol near its Press Cane ethanol plant in Chikwawa in line with the company’s overall strategy to boost feedstock production that will allow its two ethanol plants to produce ethanol 100% capacity.

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Ethanol cookstoves are taking off to help local cassava farmers and residents. The country runs on an E20 blend even though there is no blending mandate by the government, and is looking at E100 across the entire country.

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Nigeria is another Commonwealth country to keep an eye on, as we have covered so many stories coming out of Nigeria in the past year that we can’t even list them all here. Nigeria made a top story back in November 2017, as reported in The Digest, that Nigeria was “Rockin’ the cassava.” The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation signed a MoU with the Kebbi State Government to build an 84 million litres per annum capacity fuel-ethanol project, using cassava and sugarcane. WestAfricaENRG that collects MSW in Nigeria teamed with the UK’s Cranfield University and SynGas on a project to produce commercial-scale syngas from plastic waste for upgrading to fuels.

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Botswana is a Commonwealth country to pay attention to due to their recent work with jatropha biodiesel, especially considering Mozambique recently gave up on jatropha biodiesel. Researchers are pushing hard on B10 using jatropha and aren’t giving up on demonstrating the viability of jatropha for their country’s energy and fuel needs, even with frostbite, heat waves and hailstorms for several years making it more challenging. Japanese researchers have joined them in some of the efforts and are smart about it, using native, indigenous plants like morula, morama and mongongo as well. Japan’s investments in Botswana means they see true potential there and so do we.

South Africa isn’t a surprise on this list as The Digest has covered many news stories about their sustainable aviation fuels, thanks in part to South African Airways vision and collaboration with Boeing, WWF, and SkyNRG.

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Ghana’s work on ethanol using cassava is not letting up either and showing movement forward. China New Energy is constructing a new ethanol plant in Ghana and several others are looking at adding and expanding cassava-to-ethanol plants.

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Kenya is all about croton – not cotton – for biodiesel and other byproducts like animal feed and briquettes. Penn State researchers have been involved in several related croton projects in Kenya and we see potential there as well. Kenya is also looking at waste-to-energy projects, ethanol cookstoves, and other innovations that make it a Commonwealth country to check out.

Uganda stands out for recent investments being made into the country, like Bionas East Africa’s investment of $70 billion over the course of 25 years in four major bio-based economy projects based on jatropha that will create more than 1.8 million jobs. And the World Bank is now funding a three year project to scale up used cooking oil for biodiesel in Uganda. READ MORE