UNIDO and Kenya hope to cook up a biomass storm

A five-year joint biomass project between the UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and Kenya will be ready in June.

The project will help to further assist Kenya’s adoption of clean energy solutions by removing its heavy reliance on fuel wood and agricultural residue for cooking.

‘This project, which partly aims at moving the country away from traditional wood stoves, should be in place by June this year,’ says UNIDO Kenya expert on renewable energy, Paul Njuguna.

The project also hopes to develop ways to produce biomass, such as charcoal, for use in cooking in a sustainable way.

‘Current methods of production of charcoal have efficiencies of around 10% but, by the end of the program, we hope to increase that to at least 40%,’ Njuguna adds.

Part of the project aims to indentify farmers that would grow trees commercially to be a source of sustainable biomass and to encourage up to 98 million homes to adopt clean and efficient fuels by 2020.