TANZANIA:-Biogas needs legislation: Experts

In 1993, an engineer with the then Tanzania Sisal Authority (TSA), Mr Gilead Kissaka teemed up with Mr Anael Kimaro, the person considered to be the godfather of biogas technology in Tanzania, to set out a trial of producing electricity from sisal waste.

At the time when the sisal production needed some new changes to expand its market, their mission focused on increasing utilisation of the sisal plants from 2 per cent, which consisted of fibre only and also to try to work out solutions to increasing running costs, of which 40 per cent was on electricity. That was in 1992.

In 1993, the first digester, a 60-cubic metre structure, was successfully built by the Centre for Agricultural Mechanization and Rural Technology (Camartec) at Muheza Sisal Estate.

The efforts to build a pilot demonstration plant in 2007 cost about $1.5 million, financed by the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC), Unido, the Tanzanian government and the privately owned Katani Limited.

Today, Katani limited has not only proved that sisal waste and the plant could turn the wheel of Tanzania’s power woes, but has gained international recognition by currently housing an International Biogas Competence Centre (IBCC) as a Private-Public-Partnership (PPP) project with technical and financial support of two German companies, AlternativeEnergies System AG (ALLENSYS) and BioEnergy Berlin GmbH (BEB).

The companies, which formed an energy company, Mkonge Energy Systems (MeS), have drawn up elaborate plans to expand production of biogas and attain its goal, making sisal able to contribute 500 MW of electricity to the national grid.

However, the major question is that, could all the plan succeed without a proper legislation in place to push the movement forward? The answer, according to the recent international workshop held to launch the IBCC in Tanga, was that although Tanzania has established the country’s domestic biogas programme, experience has shown that it could be a slow journey towards attaining the goal of expanding the use of alternative energy sources.

According to Katani managing director, Mr Salum Shamte, countries leading in utilisation of biogas technology, such as China and Germany, moved quickly and surely, because their governments push through legislation.

“In China, for instance, the issue was a clear government program with clear deliverables. We need to create awareness among Tanzanian government officials on the importance of developing biogas technology,” he told participants from various organisations dealing with renewable energy sources.

A biogas expert, Mrs Tong Boitin, said that the history of bigas development in China, a country that expects to have 40 million household biogas digesters installed across the country by the end of this year, began with Chairman Mao Tse-Tung’s order when he saw how biogas worked in rural areas of Wuhan and Anhui in 1958.

“During the inspection tour, Chairman Mao noted that biogas can light lamps, cook food and act as fertiliser, it should be well developed and promoted. That was the beginning of China’s national plan for rural household biogas development programme.

According to the national plan, by the end of 2010, there would be 40 million households with biogas digesters, which would produce the annual biogas output of 15.5 billion cubic metres. Dissemination rate among the 146 million households that are suitable for biogas development has been earmarked to reach 30 per cent and in 2020, the rate should be 70 per cent.

For household digesters mainly invested by governments and farm-owners are responsible for a small part of the total investment. “Tanzanian leaders should ensure that the national plan works,” she noted.

The proposed goal of the Tanzanian domestic biogas programme, according to the principal research technologist at Camartec, Dr Innocent Mjema, is to improve the livelihoods and quality of life of rural farmers in Tanzania through exploiting the market and non-market benefits of domestic biogas.

It envisages building 12,000 new biogas plants nationwide with over 95 per cent of the constructed biogas plants operated properly, by the end of the first phase of 5 years of the programme.

The programme also expects 80 per cent of the biogas households having facilities that enable proper bio-slurry use, and 100 per cent of the biogas plants having a second inlet pipe to allow future toilet connection by the end of the first phase.

Dr Mjema said that like China, the Tanzanian programme also provides for Sh300,000 subsidy per plant regardless of its size and biogas loan products to be introduced to financial institutions are currently being developed to prop up biogas development.

“Only 1,200 plants have so far been built with 250 masons trained,” he said. However, the pace has been seen as being too slow.

The acting director of the Tanzania Sisal Board (TSB), Mr Hamis Mapinda, emphasised that in order to realise such a goal, was a need of having specific legislation, citing an example from Germany, where the 2,000 Renewable Energy Source Act was put in place. “Without it the development would be very slow,” Mr Mapinda said.

An expert with a Germany-based company, BEB, specialising in planning and building biogas plants, Mr Alexander Boitin, said the Act, which was amended in 2004, guarantees a fixed feed in compensation for 20 years. It has enabled the country to double the number of household digesters from 1,000 in 2000 to 4,000 biogas plants in 2005.

The experts in the workshop agreed that it was high time the government put in place a legislation to develop and expand biogas and other renewable energy technologies in order to reduce the use of fossil fuel and charcoal to enable Tanzania reach its energy targets.

Specifically, sisal, the crop that was the doyen of the country’s economy in the 1960s and 1970s, has proved that it could play a pivotal role to fulfill the energy requirements of the country