Small-scale bioenergy initiatives: Lessons from case studies in Asia, Latin America and Africa

Abstract

A study on the impacts that different types of local level bioenergy initiatives can have on rural livelihoods in different contexts in the developing world was carried out through analysis of 15 international case studies between September and November 2008. The cases were selected from 12 countries in six regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia and included a range of bioenergy resources, including natural bioresources: bioresidues from existing agricultural, forestry or industrial activities and dedicated energy crops, both liquid and solid, commonly known as biofuels. The initiatives match these resources to a range of energy needs including cooking, mobility, productive uses and electricity for lighting and communication - thereby highlighting the scope of bioenergy applications. It was found that small-scale bioenergy initiatives can offer natural resource efficiency and can help create virtuous circles of local energy production, consumption and productivity. Important in their development is long-term planning and regulation and in some cases partial insulation from world energy markets was seen to be justified and necessary in enabling initiative start up, along with a degree of collaboration within the market chain in initial stages. It was seen that bioenergy has the potential to offer flexibility and income diversity, reducing risk to rural producers, and that long local market chains can spread out benefits thus offering new livelihood choices within rural communities. It was also found that moving bioenergy resources up the energy ladder increases their financial value, whilst any new activity raising demand does also raise prices, even those for bioresidues previously considered as waste. Finally, the small-scale bioenergy initiatives studied appeared to show that local staple food security was not affected with interconnection between food and bioresources/bioresidues initiatives not present, and with biofuels positioned as an additional, rather than as an alternative, income source for rural producers.