Kenya: Biodigesters

Program Currently Inactive

Indoor air pollution and deforestation are pressing issues for the developing world. The burning of solid wood fuels for heating and cooking creates indoor air pollution that is responsible for almost 4 million premature deaths annually. The collection and use of solid wood fuels, like firewood and charcoal, also contributes to climate change through the emission of dangerous greenhouse gases and deforestation.

The SimGas Biogas Program of Activities aims to use carbon finance to promote the use of biogas as clean cooking fuel in rural Kenyan farming communities. The project seeks to distribute biogas stoves to 75,000 families and help them install biodigesters, which convert manure and organic household waste into a clean fuel that can be used for cooking and a nutrient rich fertilizer that can be used for agriculture.

Three quarters of Kenya’s population live on farms and own livestock. Nearly 90 percent of these households are reliant on firewood to cook and heat their homes. Adoption of the traditional brick-laid bio-digesters has been minimal in Kenya, due in part to expensive installation and size limitations.

SimGas BV, a Dutch social enterprise, has developed an innovative small-scale biogas system made of recycled plastic. Biogas systems—the biodigester and the biogas stove—can greatly reduce indoor air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation. They also increase energy security and household savings, by reducing dependence on scarce, polluting, and expensive solid wood fuels and costly fertilizers.

The project will lower greenhouse gasses, specifically carbon dioxide emissions from burning firewood, and generate emission reductions that will be purchased by Ci-Dev. These results-based payments will subsidize the retail price of the SimGas BV biodigesters and biogas stoves, making them more affordable to poor households, and offer an extended five-year warranty to improve consumer confidence.