Supporting Thermal Energy Services in Afghanistan

Binu Parthan from Sustainable Energy Associates writes on the growing support for thermal energy service considerations in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is often in the news for the wrong reasons such as large swathes of migrants on European shores, armed conflicts, loss of life etc. However it is possible that the country might actually be implementing one of the most innovative energy services projects which has just started implementation with support from the STEPs team.

Decades of political instability and conflict has resulted in low levels of infrastructure access levels in Afghanistan. Over 57% of the Afghan population does not have access to electricity and 81% of the population does not have access to non-solid fuels (World Bank/IEA, 2015). The situation is dire in rural Afghanistan where only 4% of the population have access to non-solid fuels. Many such locations in Afghanistan are located in colder regions with more than 6000 HDDs/Year.

Afghan households use a Tandoor, a traditional cylindrical clay or metal oven for cooking and baking an efficient version of which is shown in the Fig. It is reported that 90% of cooking revolves around making bread called Naan, followed by potatoes. Houses also use a Bukhari, a traditional space heater for heating the living spaces in winter. Some of the traditional houses also have a Tawa Khana which circulates the hot combustion gases from the tandoor under the floor of the living room and releases to the outside through the opposite wall.

Households in Afghanistan use firewood, animal dung cakes, charcoal and shrubs for heating and cooking. Traditionally firewood and charcoal were purchased in rural Afghanistan but increasingly shrubs and animal dung cakes also have to be purchased. The thermal energy use of solid fuels also have their serious health effects, the annual number of pre-mature deaths from indoor-air pollution is estimated to be 54,000/Year (WHO, 2009). In comparison the civilian casualties in 2015 from the armed conflict in Afghanistan was 11,002 (UNAMA, 2016). The use of solid fuels are also a financial strain on the Afghan households as the average rural Afghan household spends over $ 90 on fuels of which only 12% is on kerosene/lighting with 88% on thermal energy. The prices of the solid fuels also increase by 15-25% during winter months as well.

An efficient Tandoor in Afghanistan. Image: COAM/Amy Jennings

Since late 2013, since the inception of the STEPs project, till late 2015, Sustainable Energy Associates (SEA), one of the partners have been working with the Ministry for Rural Reconstruction and Development (MRRD) in Afghanistan and UNDP to develop a project to address these rural energy and thermal energy challenges. These efforts have led to development of a new programme – Afghanistan Sustainable Energy for Rural Development (ASERD) which has business model and financial innovation at the core of the programme design and was finalised by SEA in late 2015. The project agreement was signed by MRRD and UNDP in late December 2015 and will be financed by the governments of South Korea and Sweden. The project will have a financial outlay of over US$ 50 million and will be implemented over 4 years during the period 2016-2019.

The ASERD programme plans to establish sustainable rural energy services in 194 rural communities in 4 years, providing both electrical and thermal energy services. The efforts will bring sustainable energy to over 19,500 households providing health, economic and social benefits. However the major contribution the programme will make to rural energy in Afghanistan would be to establish delivery models that are technology neutral, leverage additional local and international resources, mobilise communities, engage the private sector and financiers to establish a self-sustaining delivery model. The thermal energy service model which will be used by ASERD is shown in Fig.1.

Thermal Energy Service Model of ASERD. Image: Sustainable Energy Associates

Past rural energy programmes in Afghanistan have mainly relied on technology driven approaches which have focused on commissioning electricity generating equipment and transferring ownership, operation and utility management responsibilities to the communities. These efforts have also largely ignored the cooking and heating needs of rural population in a country which has cold winters. The opportunities to go beyond household energy to commercial, enterprise and public service use of energy have not been exploited or capitalised effectively. Similarly private sector and financial institutions have only played a limited role in the programme so far and the aspects of policy, regulation, standards and incentive frameworks have also not received considerable attention.

Against this backdrop, the ASERD programme seeks to graduate from the current approach to establish a technology-neutral, sustainable service delivery arrangement to provide thermal and electrical energy in rural areas of Afghanistan for household, social and productive needs. The programme will also provide energy in rural areas to seek agriculture productivity gains, rural enterprise development, income generation, community social empowerment and cohesion as well as to expand public service to improve access to better health, education and security in rural areas. To deliver these services in rural areas in a sustainable manner the programme will seek to engage the national utility and the private sector in addition to community mobilisation.

The programme will also develop capacities of the government agencies, civil society and the, private sector including the financial sector. ASERD will also create frameworks for policy and regulation, testing and quality assurance as well as will also pilot seven innovative energy service delivery models which will leverage skillsets and resources from communities, private sector and financial institutions some of which are linked to global financing mechanisms for climate change and energy. These models will also result in benefits to women and the marginalised nomadic Kuchi communities.

The design of ASERD has benefited from the learnings on thermal energy services offerings, key challenges and solutions gained by the STEPs project team which will now be used to support about 20,000 families in Afghanistan. SEA will be involved during the implementation of ASERD to support MRRD and UNDP.

– Binu Parthan, SEA

References

Conservation Organisation of Afghan Mountain Areas (COAM), 2012, Shah Foladi Village energy Use Survey

International Energy Agency (IEA) and the World Bank. 2015. “Sustainable Energy for All 2015—Progress Toward Sustainable Energy” (June), World Bank, Washington, DC. Doi: 10.1596/978-1-4648 -0690-2 License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO

United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), 2016, ‘Civilian Casualties Hit a New High in 2015’ available at  https://unama.unmissions.org/civilian-casualties-hit-new-high-2015

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2015, Project Document: Afghanistan – Sustainable Energy for Rural Development (ASERD)

World Health Organisation, 2009, Country profile of Environmental Burden of Disease: Afghanistan

Promoting LPG Uptake in Developing Countries

Increasing the use of LPG fuels as a means of achieving greater sustainability has been a targeted policy for a number of developing countries in recent years. However, projects to promote LPG access have met with mixed success. The barriers to increasing the use of LPG in developing countries, particularly for poorer communities or those in rural areas, are numerous, including issues of price of fuel, access considerations and the reliability of supply, and the price of LPG-using equipment, for example stoves..

A number of projects have endeavoured to mitigate these barriers and improve the state of LPG markets in their respective countries and regions. The Ghanaian LPG sector is often cited as an example of a successful government-level intervention to develop LPG markets.

The case of LPG in Ghana

The earliest government programs in the sector began in 1989, and recent government policy on energy has put access to LPG for households and institutions and security of LPG supply as high priorities in the national energy strategy. Government strategy has addressed two key themes: increasing indigenous production, storage and equipment production capacity for LPG, and removing barriers to access for both the urban and rural populations of the country. Results of these interventions have included improving the production and storage capacity of the Tema oil refinery, re-capitalising the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company to indigenously produce LPG cylinders, and price-levelling the cost of LPG fuel across the country to promote rural market growth.

However, direct subsidies such as those used in Ghana for levelling the price of LPG fuel can have unintended consequences and distort markets. There has been seen in the rise of LPG conversions for taxis and minibuses in the country, taking advantage of the newly-subsidised LPG fuel for transport use. The rise in LPG use in road vehicles was also due to increased government taxes on transport fuels in 2012 and 2013, which do not include LPG in their remit. The combined effect of being able to avoid taxation on petrol or diesel, as well as take advantage of subsidised domestic LPG, has led to increased LPG use in the automotive sector. More recently, from 2013 onwards, supplementary imports to the Tema Oil Refinery’s LPG output, as well as the government’s scaling back of price controls and subsidies, have reduced automotive LPG use. [3]

Other countries, such as Indonesia and India, have also implemented direct subsidy models, such as the Indonesian kerosene conversion megaproject from 2007-2009, and the Indian LPG sector, which as of 2015 was offering direct subsidies to consumers for the purchase of LPG fuels and equipment through the government’s Direct Benefit Transfer system. Both of these projects have seen a huge shift from the use of kerosene for cooking and heating to the use of LPG, and both projects have achieved this through re-targeting government subsidies towards LPG, and away from other fuel sources. In the case of Indonesia, LPG use following the conversion project rose to over 80% of rural and 90% of peri-urban and urban households by 2013. The Indonesian program also intervened in the equipment sector, distributing 44 million LPG conversion kits to 15 provinces in the country, enabling consumers to convert to LPG fuel without the high initial investment in LPG-using equipment. [1] [2]

Increase in LPG usage before and after the kerosene-LPG conversion project in Indonesia. Source: Pertamina, 2013, http://www.pertamina.com/en/

However, experience with developing a functional private market for LPG in some developing countries is limited, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. The persistent issues of access to the LPG fuel and reliability of supply, as well as transport considerations for rural areas and a lack of a distribution network, can hamper the development of markets. The next post in this series will investigate business models for use in the LPG sector by private or public-private participants.

– Xavier Lemaire and Daniel Kerr, UCL Energy Institute, February 2016

[1] Budya & Arofat (2010) Providing cleaner energy access in Indonesia through the megaproject of kerosene conversion to LPG. Energy Policy, Vol. 39, pp. 7575 – 7586.

[2] Andadari et al. (2014) Energy poverty reduction by fuel switching. Impact evaluation of the LPG conversion program in Indonesia. Energy Policy, Vol. 66, pp. 436 – 449.

[3] Biscoff et al. (2012) Scenario of the emerging shift from gasoline to LPG fuelled cars in Ghana: A case study in Ho Municipality, Volta Region. Energy Policy, Vol. 44, pp 354 – 361.

“Fuel Switching” To LPG: Substituting More Sustainable Fuels

‘Fuel switching’ has achieved some prominence in the sustainable energy for development discourse. Fuel switching is usually used to define situations where end-users transition from less-sustainable traditional fuels, such as fossil fuels like kerosene or paraffin, or traditional woodfuels, to more sustainable sources of fuel used for the same purpose. For example, kerosene for lighting may be substituted for electric lighting from a solar home system, or woodfuels used for cooking or heating may be substituted for LPG.

Fuel switching has been particularly put forward when relating to LPG uptake in developing countries, as LPG fuel has significant benefits over other modes of fuel used for similar purposes. These can include superior combustion properties, producing less indoor air pollution with the attendant co-benefits in terms of public health. Fuel switching can lead to a reduced burden on the end-user for energy resource acquisition, such as alleviating the time burden of collecting woodfuels or purchasing charcoal/kerosene.

Time spent collecting wood fuels per day by women in different African countries, 1990-2003, World Bank 2006. Source: http://ourworldindata.org/data/environmental-change/indoor-air-pollution/

Fuel switching (combined with the use of efficient cookstoves) can also lead to improved performance resulting from the use of a more energy-dense fuel, such as reduced cooking times.

A comparison of different types of clean cookstoves and their relative energy consumptions and times to boil water. Source: http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2014/06/thermal-efficiency-cooking-stoves.html

But fuel switching is not a one-way process where energy users switch to modern fuels and never come back to traditional fuels. Energy stacking is defined as when end-users in developing countries engage in multi-modal fuel usage depending on a variety of factors (e.g. variances in household income seasonally or over time), or utilising certain fuels for specific purposes (e.g. using kerosene for lighting and woodfuels for cooking).

Creating the incentive for a household, commercial enterprise or industry to engage in fuel switching can be challenging. The barriers to increased uptake of sustainable energy sources and more-sustainable energy equipment, such as solar home systems or LPG cooking apparatus, are well-documented [1] [2]. These can include higher costs for fuels, high initial investment costs putting systems/equipment out of reach of users, and problems with fuel availability, for example in distributing LPG fuels to remote rural areas.

These issues will be addressed in the next article in this series on the STEPs Blog, “Methods of Promoting LPG Uptake in Developing Countries”.

— Xavier Lemaire & Daniel Kerr, UCL Energy Institute, February 2016

[1] Pandey & Chaubal (2011) Comprehending household cooking energy choice in rural India. Biomass & Bioenergy, Vol. 35, pp. 4724 – 4731.

[2] Rai & McDonald (2009) Cookstoves and Markets – Experiences, Successes and Opportunities. Available at: http://www.hedon.info/docs/GVEP_Markets_and_Cookstoves__.pdf#

Side-Stepping the Energy Ladder

For decades now there has been talk of a hierarchy of energy use or ‘ladder’ which defined levels of development as well personal aspirations. Occupying the bottom of this ladder were primary fuels such as biomass, dung, etc. Moving towards the middle we had kerosene and LPG which were considered ‘modern fuels’ because of their comparative convenience as well as fairly sophisticated refining process associated with hydro-carbon fuels. And of course, at the top of the ladder was electricity, the most versatile and modern energy source of them all.

There have been many articles published about the energy ladder, some supportive of its clear albeit simplistic representation of how households progress in terms of fuel use while others have been more critical altogether of its rigidity and inability to accommodate variables such as culture,  differing socio-economic and geographic contexts. How this is playing out in South Africa today is quite interesting. Looking at South Africa’s energy policy, it is highly orientated towards developing the ‘top of the ladder’ options. Policy and regulations abound when it comes to nuclear, coal, large scale renewable, LPG gas, etc. But there is little regulatory interest when it comes to wood. Perhaps its posturing (Africa’s largest and most sophisticated economy requires nuclear not biomass regulations) or perhaps that’s the reality (the energy service activities are at the top of the ladder).

Despite this there are a number of inconsistencies emerging;

• Electricity is becoming increasingly expensive (above inflation increases for over 5 years already with about the same to come) so many poorer households are having to ‘back-switch’ to LPG and paraffin.
• Many middle class households that have been electrified for decades are opting to cook on LPG gas (on stainless steel hobs for sure) and heat their houses in winter using wood (up-market fireplaces).
• Millions of households still cook with wood although they have access to electricity. The energy source is simply uneconomic to support the full range of thermal services households require.
• High oil prices (think kerosene and LPG) and increasing electricity prices are putting strain on the ability of people to use fuels which they have access to. Access and utilisation have become two different issues
• Political promises which have for decades reinforced the energy ladder now cannot be met as lower-income households cannot afford to utilise these fuels for all services required.
• Department of Rural Development and Land Affairs has put out a tender for improved cookstoves, a technology that has never appealed to the Department of Energy because of the ‘poverty’ stigma associated with wood. Or, “people did not struggle [against Apartheid] to use wood” the former Minister of Energy [Dipuo Peters] once said to this blogger [African Minister’s Meeting, Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, 17th September 2011].

Without significant subsidies, the lower-income households will find ascending the so called energy ladder increasingly difficult to achieve. The progressive notion of the ladder had much to do with the assumption that it was simply a matter of time before households, given broader economic growth, would progress up the ladder. However such economic growth hasn’t quite materialised and the associated costs of using these fuels has become increasingly exorbitant. Perhaps the middle-class should be used to assist in de-stigmatising the use of biomass fuels and the like which will at least assist in addressing some of the indignity associated with being trapped at the ‘bottom of the ladder’. Third generation improved cookstoves instead of open fires should go a long way in terms of doing just that.

– Robert Aitken, Restio Energy

Is LPG Part of the Problem or Solution?

Dr. Binu Parthan of SEA discusses the role LPG can play in household energy provision in developing countries:

When I discuss the use of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) as one of the technology options for cooking and heating at the household level in developing countries, it is often met with resistance. I have been challenged on the increased greenhouse gas emissions from introducing LPG into a biomass baseline, on introducing dependency on fuel supplies to areas which are self-sufficient and also introducing the dangers of market and price fluctuations to households with limited incomes.  All of these are valid concerns and should be addressed through the approaches.

I would like to view the indoor-air pollution in the developing country households as a health problem as well as an energy problem. Indoor air pollution from inefficient biomass burning results in pre-mature deaths of 2 million people in developing countries every year. Most of the rural areas I have been to, availability of biomass resources are decreasing and increasingly households have to purchase biomass at fluctuating market prices. In countries with space heating needs in winter such as Lesotho, the expenditure on solid fuels is significantly higher than what is spent by households on kerosene for lighting. So developing country households are already spending considerable share of their incomes on biomass purchases at market prices.

Now regarding increased emissions, if your baseline is biomass which is sourced from non-sustainable forests or woodland (as is often the case) the decrease in carbon stocks as a result of deforestation may offset most or part of the increased emissions from LPG use. Over the years I have seen a number of cookstoves and space heaters from solar cookers to, electric induction cookers efficient biomass stoves which should be all be promoted strongly But I believe LPG should also be part of the menu of options primarily However we should also work on regulatory frameworks for LPG to regulate pricing, have safety standards for stoves and require gas companies to retail small canisters to increase access by poorer households.

So I would encourage a healthier and cleaner thermal energy alternative for developing country households which are technology-neutral. The choice of which technology and fuel to use should be left to the households and users to decide.

– Binu Parthan, SEA

A traditional cook stove in Lesotho. Image: Sustainable Energy Associates

Thermal Energy Challenges in Rural Lesotho and an Opportunity to Leap to Modern Energy

Dr. Binu Parthan of SEA offers his thoughts on the thermal energy situation in rural Lesotho:

Lesotho is a land-locked country of over 30,000 km² land area located in in southern Africa. The country with a population of over 2 million is one of the least developed countries with a low Human Development Index of 0.45 placing the country at 160 out of 185. Lesotho consists of highlands with altitudes ranging from 1400 m to 3400 m above sea level and is often called as the Roof of Africa. The country remains cooler than the surrounding region with average temperatures of 20⁰C in summer and -2⁰C in winter. Sesotho people live in traditional Rondavels and need energy for cooking and heating with 61% of the population however depends on solid fuels – firewood, shrubs, animal dung-cakes and crop residues for their thermal energy needs. In rural areas where 83% of households are located the dependence on solid fuels is significantly higher at 80%.  The modern sources available for cooking and space heating are LPG, Kerosene and Electricity the use of which is mainly confined to urban areas. The traditional and inefficient use of solid biomass fuels and the resultant indoor air pollution is also affecting the health of more than 1.6 million of the Sesotho with 200 annual deaths due to indoor-air pollution.

I had been working over the past year supporting UNDP and the Ministry of Energy Meteorology and Water Affaires (MEMWA) to scope and develop a new programme Lesotho Energy Alternatives Programme (LEAP) which will address electrical and thermal energy needs of the village in the country. The LEAP programme when implemented will establish Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) managed by private operators in rural areas providing electrical and thermal energy to households. The village energy service providers will use a range of technologies -LPG cookstoves, efficient biomass cookstoves, LPG room heaters, efficient biomass heaters etc. through an energy service arrangement.  While the energy service arrangement for electricity is clearer, possible arrangements for thermal energy needs to be developed further. The LEAP upcoming programme in Lesotho provides a good opportunity for the STEPs project team to collaborate and support the piloting of models for thermal energy services delivery.

– Binu Parthan, SEA

A Sesotho woman, next to her Rondavel, her new LPG canister and old biomass stove. Image: Sustainable Energy Associates.