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Across the world, climate change affects us all. However, it affects some more than others and as it worsens, the world’s poorest will suffer already more than they already are.
Zambia has one of the lowest GDPs per capita and a large portion of the population lives off the grid with charcoal being the primary fuel used for both cooking and heating.
Deforestation in Zambia
Charcoal is made from heating wood while starving it of oxygen. While it’s made from wood rather than fossil fuels, it still makes quite a significant amount of greenhouse gases when it’s burned and it turns out that for cooking, gas is technically greener.
The greenhouse gases produced by Zambia’s off-grid populations aren’t the problem here, though. The problem is the massive amounts of deforestation occurring in the country and charcoal production adds to an already-worrying problem.
Zambia has the worst deforestation rates in the world, but biomass could be the solution.
What is Biomass?
Biomass is organic matter that comes from animals and plants and can be burned to create heat for cooking, heating, or even generating electricity.
It can either be the direct product of a crop grown to harvest biomass or a by-product of other biological processes like waste or sewage.
To make it usable, biomass is converted into biofuels and how much work this involves can vary according to the product being produced.
Primary and Secondary Biofuels
There are two main categories of biofuel: primary and secondary. A primary biofuel is largely unprocessed and used for cooking, heating, or generating electricity. This is often in briquette or pellet form, much like with charcoal, but made from more sustainable sources.
Secondary biofuels are produced from biomass and can include things like ethanol and biodiesel, which can be used in vehicles or industrial processes. Both are made from biomass feedstocks.
Energy Crops
The best way to get biomass without recovering it from waste products is through plant matter and some plants are perfectly suited to this. We call these kinds of plants energy crops as they’re mostly low-maintenance, high-yield, and high-calorie when harvested.
One such energy crop is miscanthus giganteus, a hybrid of two kinds of Asian grass. The crop is perennial, requires little maintenance, and doesn’t need much herbicide or fertiliser to get started.
After a couple of years, the crop can be harvested and will last over 25 years. The only problem is that it’s quite costly to get it started.
SavSmart Biomass’ Plan
SavSmart Biomass is creating plantations of miscanthus giganteus in the northeast of Zambia to produce feedstock for biofuels.
In addition to producing biomass, it plans to create briquettes from the harvest and eventually build a refinery on-site to produce syngas and green diesel, which can be mixed with regular diesel and used as a lower-impact alternative.
Will it Work?
Founding investors like Michael Silver and Tor Anders Petterøe think it will. Similarly, so do the companies, NGOs, and universities like AgriSmart Zambia, Technotherm, the University of Zambia, and everyone at SavSmart Biomass.
