In light of historic and emerging concerns on global warming and the environment, Tanzanian rural communities may be taking a step in the right direction by migrating to “greener” forms of fuel for cooking.
Inhabitants in such communities are rapidly adopting the use of biogas as a strategy to reduce expenditure on the fuelling necessary for cooking and illumination. For instance, in the Karagwe District which is home to some 332,000 people, numerous households have installed biogas digesters in order to leverage readily available deposits of animal waste to produce energy in environmentally friendly ways.
Biogas is a renewable energy source, and is produced from organic waste such as the faeces from animals. It is very combustible because it is primarily a mixture of methane (cooking gas) and carbon dioxide. Biogas can be used to produce electricity when fed into a gas engine designed for that purpose.[eap_ad_2]
Because of the abundance of animal wastes in these rural areas, the use of biogas is seeing impressive adoption rates in Tanzania. Apart from its role in cooking and lighting, biogas has freed inhabitants from the arduous task of chopping down trees for firewood thus reducing deforestation in the country.
Also, the inhabitants are healthier as they no longer inhale all the smoke and ash associated with the use of firewood.
A rural farmer expresses his satisfaction with the use of this renewable energy source in the following words; “Every day I take heaps of cow dung and mix them with water. The mixture is then channelled into the fermentation pits. The pit must be properly constructed, using concrete and cement to make sure they are alright. The residue from cow dung is then used as a fertilizer. This is great because it has allowed us to also grow vegetables.”
It will be worth it for the urban societies all across Africa to borrow a thing or two from this development especially because of the ever rising levels of carbon dioxide emitted by industries, auto-mobiles and other artificial activities. The World Meteorological Organization revealed that carbon dioxide emissions last year were the highest ever with a concentration of 396 parts per million.
The position of scientists globally is that these emissions may soon rise beyond the natural capacity of the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere to absorb them; leading to increased temperatures, rising sea levels, drought and storms. It remains necessary, therefore, to increase the effort for alternative sources of energy that do not further pollute the environment and raise the carbon level. (VENTURES AFRICA)[eap_ad_3]
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