Africa Centre for Energy Policy’s Post

Ethanol has the potential to drive widespread clean cooking adoption across Africa, but its opportunities remain largely untapped. Moderating a session on the sidelines of the 2024 Future of Energy Conference with diverse stakeholders from industry, government and advocacy groups in Ghana and Kenya was insightful. Kenya has made a lot of progress, where 1.2 million households use ethanol, aiming for 30% adoption by 2028. Despite the differing perspectives, these were cross cutting challenges, limited access to funding, feedstock issues, limited regulations, and high import dependency. As next steps, speakers recommended conducting nationwide feedstock assessments, earmarking land for energy crops, and linking agribusinesses with ethanol producers. The Africa Centre for Energy Policy is committed to promoting meaningful economic participation of local population in clean cooking adoption. In 2021, the Centre launched its ethanol for clean cooking campaign as part of efforts to provide affordable clean cooking solutions to build climate resilience and adaptation among rural and peri-urban households who are heavily reliant on polluting charcoal and wood fuels as their primary source of cooking fuels. The project also aims at creating alternative livelihoods in the ethanol value chain for local population dependent on the wood fuels for income, largely women. In partnership with Oxfam, the Centre piloted a study and is currently undertaking studies in ethanol feedstock and working with research institutions for local production of ethanol based cookstoves tailored for the average Ghanaian household. Thank you Charles G. Ofori for leading this project and my esteemed panelists Dr. Faith Wandera-Odongo PAULA EDZE PRINCE ESSEL Mohammed Aminu Lukumanu Daniel Tugli #FEC2024 #CleanCooking #SustainableEnergy #EthanolSolutions