NIGERIA-BIOFUEL/CLEAN COOKING Nigerian company creates clean biofuel for domestic use

Record ID: 145149

  • Title: NIGERIA-BIOFUEL/CLEAN COOKING Nigerian company creates clean biofuel for domestic use
  • Date: 5th August 2015
  • Summary: LAGOS, NIGERIA (FILE) (REUTERS) STREET SCENES
  • Embargoed: 20th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA2C73KMLIRSZY0N0VCNO8J5F9W
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: At a processing plant in Lagos, technicians and factory workers are processing and bottling a gel made of waste from sawdust and water hyacinth as a renewable energy source for cooking.
    The factory produces 5,000 litres of gel every day. The project was started in 2011 by a local eco-friendly company called 'Green Energy and Biofuels.'
    Proponents of biofuels argue they are renewable and can help fight climate change because the growing plants ingest as much carbon dioxide from the air as the fuels made from them emit when burned.
    Critics say there is a risk of the crops infringing on land that could be used for growing food and the destruction of rainforests to make way for palm oil and sugar outweighs any carbon benefits gained from the use of such fuels.
    Myke Ologunoye is the Engineering Vice President at the company. He says they chose to use sawdust and water hyacinth which are both easily available locally but are not crops.
    "Like many other ethanol process that we have in the market today, most of the majority the food grade but our ethanol is a second generation bio-ethanol so we don't process our ethanol from cassava, maize, sugarcane like many other companies actually extract their ethanol from. Ours is from the biomass like the water hyacinth and the saw dust," he said.
    The sawdust waste used to create the bio-gel is generated from local saw mills. Saw dust is often used at animal farms or burnt.
    Water hyacinth is an invasive weed, covering vast water surfaces in Africa. 'Green Energy and Biofuels' founders say theirs is an innovative way to rid the country of one of Africa's wildest habitat colonisers using green technology.
    They also believe the gel helps women who depend on firewood and charcoal for cooking by providing them with a safer, more environmentally-friendly alternative.
    According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 98,000 Nigerian women die annually from smoke inhaled while cooking with firewood.
    Femi Oye, Chief Executive Director of 'Green Energy and Biofuels' says finding creative solutions to local environmental challenges is his passion.
    "Femi Oye believes so much that we could create a world that is green, that is clean and is sustainable. That has helped my thinking in ways by which I want to invest and where I want to put my money to work, and the kind of legacy that I want to leave behind. So I teach young people and I'm also teaching business communities as well on ways by which they can invest, they can do business, they can conduct themselves and of course they can live in a clean and green way," Oye said.
    Over 350,000 households are now using the bio-gel. The company has 45,000 distributors working in Nigeria, Ghana and Benin.
    The gel which is used in a specially designed stove and is sold from kiosks and stores across the country. A single stove burner retails for about 2,800 naira (about 14 U.S. dollars) while the double stove burner costs 4,000 naira (about 20 U.S. dollars).
    A litre of the gel is sold at 98 naira (about 5 U.S. cents) and can burn for upto 6 hours.
    "Nigerian market have received and have accepted our product so warmly to the extent that today we are even behind because the market absorption is higher than what we could produce. That is why up till date we are still having the crisis having to use our close network marketing model to distribute this product. It is accepted, it is well received," Oye said.
    59-year-old Irene Adepitan started using the stove and gel in 2013. Adepitan who is a retired banker says the stove and gel are affordable. She is also pleased with the lack of toxic gas emissions.
    "Having being an asthmatic patient for a very long time, I saw this as a welcome ... I was excited that if the end product is oxygen then it will definitely be good for me, which means that my kitchen, my environment and everything will be saturated with oxygen which gives life as against carbon. So that was one of the main reason why I decided to use the stove," Adepitan said.
    The creators of the bio-gel say they hope to export it across Africa as an alternative fuel, helping to meet the continent's growing energy needs.
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