Abstract
Renewable energy like biogas technology is a significant requirement for human life. It deeply contributes to all aspects of human welfare such as cooking food, heat and light; health care and sanitation, education and job creation. In the study area, the community was with severe scarcity of fuelwood and associated problems. In the study area, forestland has been changed to other land uses like urbanization, industrialization, expansion of grazing and cultivation land causing high fuel wood scarcity.
The objective of the study was to investigate the contribution of biogas technology in saving fuel wood and reducing deforestation in Bishoftu town, Ethiopia. Multi-stage sampling procedure was employed to select sample households. A total of 133 sample households (37 users and 96 non-users) were involved in the household survey. The major domestic energy sources for consumption were fuel wood, dung cake and charcoal accounting 4533.90kg, 4060kg and 1143.5kg per week in the study area, respectively. The results of the study showed that each household can save 11.88 kg of fire wood per day and 4348.08 kg per year. Out of the 59 regular functioning biogas digesters 256,536.72kg of firewood can be saved per year. The households’ average charcoal consumption before the biogas digester construction was 4.16 kg per day and the consumption of charcoal was reduced to 1.66 kg after they start using biogas. This means 2.5kg of charcoal was saved per day and 915kg of charcoal was saved per year in each household. Overall out of the 59 regular functioning biogas digesters in the study area 53,985 kg of charcoal can be saved per year. Findings have shown that lack of awareness creation activities has significantly affected people’s attitude towards biogas technology status. This has been the most difficulties to the contribution of biogas technology to local communities in the study area. Energy policies should focus on raising awareness of the community to use modern renewable energy and at the same time to save fuel wood consumption.
Keywords: Biogas energy, Fuel wood, Household, digester, consumption
