Zimbabwe: Biofuels - Zim Losing Billions

by Stephen Tsoroti (Financial Gazette/All Africa) Hamstrung by debilitating liquidity challenges, Zimbabwe is missing the chance to improve its revenue position by neglecting the development of biofuels, a renewable energy expert has noted.

Clement Shonhiwa, a renewable energy expert and consultant at the University of Zimbabwe, said the country stood to benefit a lot if it fully utilises its capacity to produce ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from other sources such as jatropha.

Zimbabwe is spending an estimated US$120 million on fuel imports every month, amounting to an annual bill of around US$1,4 billion.

With only one biofuel plant operating at Chisumbanje in the Lowveld, albeit with numerous challenges, the country has the potential of establishing many more ethanol producing plants that would assist it in reducing its fuel import bill.

Citing the ethanol plant in Chisumbanje and the biodiesel plant in Mt Hampden, which was commissioned in 2007 and only operated for a year before it collapsed owing to financial problems, Shonhiwa said Zimbabwe is capable of being self-reliant on fuel.

As a result, the biodiesel project, which would not only have used oils from the jatropha plant alone but from other crops such as sunflower, groundnuts, cotton seed, rape seed, caster bean, has been reduced to a white elephant after some tried to make political mileage out of it. READ MORE