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Zambia is a country where two-thirds of the population live off the grid and burns charcoal for cooking and heating. This has led to 300,000 hectares of forest being depleted each year to produce charcoal and with something needing to be done, SavSmart Biomass is using a high-yield energy crop to create greener alternatives.
The project is ambitious and SavSmart Biomass isn’t the only group involved. Here are a few of the people and organisations looking to wean Zambia off charcoal and get the country onto biomass and biofuels.
SavSmart Biomass
SavSmart Biomass is the renewable energy company created to grow miscanthus giganteus, the perfect energy crop to grow in the Muchinga Province in northeast Zambia. They’ll use this to both produce more green energy in Zambia and also replace the charcoal production that’s leading to deforestation.
For this project and business to work, they’ve partnered with other entities, businesses, organisations, and individuals.
Big Grass Biomass Fuels Limited
Big Grass Biomass Fuels Limited is a subsidiary of SavSmart BioMass and registered in Zambia. This limited company will manage cash balances to ensure the project’s later expansion goes ahead with the refinery allowing all 25,000 hectares of the plantation to be used while also promising growth and earnings to its shareholders.
AgriSmart Zambia
AgriSmart Zambia is an NGO from Lusaka, Zambia that includes members from Rutgers University, Purdue University, University of California, Davis, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Agribusiness in Sustainable Natural African Plant Products (ASNAPP), and several local Zambian organisations.
AgriSmart Zambia was created in 2015 and has continued a lot of the work and projects that were being run and funded by ASNAPP, USAID, OXFAM, etc.
The main goal of AgriSmart Zambia is to address hunger and famine in Zambia’s rural areas through the cultivation of vegetable crops by teaching farmers how to plant and manage crops.
Biodiversity & Ecosystem Futures (BEF)
Biodiversity & Ecosystem Futures (BEF) creates technology solutions for the environmental asset markets and for funding climate change and biodiversity projects.
They do this through Green Impact Units, a solution that’s built using blockchain technology. This allows transactions to be transparent and auditable with accurate data. As with other blockchain technologies, this makes the data particularly safe.
University of Zambia (UNZA)
The University of Zambia will be working with SavSmart Biomass to train local agronomists to help with the importation and multiplication of rhizomes so that the miscanthus can be planted in the plantations in the Muchinga Province.
Other universities are also involved with the project including Rutgers University, Stellenbosch University, University of California, Davis, and Purdue University.
Technotherm
Technotherm SA is working with SavSmart Biomass to construct a biomass refinery to produce syngas, clean petroleum products, and hydrogen.
When organic compounds are heated in a controlled manner in low-oxygen environments, they break down into liquids and gas. Technotherm’s refinery can do this to the biomass obtained from the miscanthus giganteus planted, grown, and harvested by SavSmart Biomass and local farmers through the out-grower scheme.
As the heating is done in a low-oxygen environment, you don’t get the kind of burning you do with high-oxygen heating so this process results in very low emissions. This results in clean gasoline and diesel that can be made without producing CO2.
Local Farmers in Muchinga Province, Zambia
As the majority of the local population lives off the grid and relies on subsistence farming, SavSmart Biomass has developed its out-grower scheme to generate income for the farmers and stop the annual burning of the grass.
The farmers will be paid more than double what they currently get from maize production without any input costs while also offering an alternative to producing charcoal, which is at the root of Zambia’s deforestation issues.
There will also be jobs created with over 200 permanent workers in the nursery complex with a further 300 daily contractors.
Investors, Founders, and Board Members
The project also required initial investment to get off the ground and included support from founding investors like Michael Silver and Tor Anders Petterøe.
The board includes experienced agronomists, chartered accountants, experts in sustainable finance, carbon markets, and technology, business leaders, and professors.
The Star of the Show, Miscanthus Giganteus
Arguably, the most important player in all of this is the crop itself. The whole project is possible thanks to the hard work in isolating miscanthus giganteus so that it can be used as feedstock to create low-sulphur green fuel.
Despite miscanthus giganteus likely to do wonders for Zambia’s green fuel production and reduce deforestation, the plant is a hybrid of two perennial types of grass native to Asia: Miscanthus sinensis and Miscanthus sacchariflorus.
The crop used is particularly good for this project as it produces higher yields than wood, can produce more green energy and fuel, and is very easy to grow, maintain, and harvest. Miscanthus giganteus is perennial and can be harvested annually from the second year onwards. The crops can also last for upwards of 25 years.
It’s also a great fit for the tropical climate in Zambia and the massive grass (sometimes known as elephant grass) creates a canopy that stops weeds from growing. To get the plant started, very little herbicide and fertiliser are needed and other than the high initial costs of cultivation, the costs are minimal once it’s established.
Miscanthus giganteus is also shown to improve biodiversity where it’s planted with insects and mammals benefiting. There’s still some research to be done on bird populations, but it’s currently thought that it causes an increase. The number of pest species also reduces in the presence of miscanthus.
It uses less water than mature woodland and doesn’t need anywhere near as much nitrogen or other chemicals that a lot of other crops.
SavSmart Biomass will be using its variety of miscanthus which has been isolated by leading US universities. It’s applying for the patent for this variety so that it can solidify its position using the plant in the Zambian green fuel sector.
