Determinants of biogas technology adoption in southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Renewable energies such as biogas are considered as clean sources of energy that minimize environmental impacts and are sustainable with regard to current and future economic and social needs. Biogas offers an attractive option for replacing the unsustainable usage of traditional energy sources such as firewood, cow dung, and charcoal in developing countries. In Ethiopia, these energy sources have been in decline. To address these challenges, mainly in rural areas, biogas technology has been domesticated since 2009, as seen in the National Program. The purpose of this study is thus to examine factors that influence households' decisions of adopting biogas technology in rural areas in southern Ethiopia. Methods: A sample of 268 households with 134 biogas adopters and 134 non-adopters were surveyed using simple random and purposive sampling techniques, respectively. The data were collected through individual interviews of households using a semistructured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and a binary logistic regression model were used for the data analysis. The binary logistic regression model was applied to identify determinant factors affecting the adoption of biogas technology. Results: The results of the study indicated that biogas adopter and non-adopter households had significant mean differences in education level, cattle size, household income, farmland size, number of planted trees as well as the distance to water sources, market places, and firewood sources. Level of education, level of income, access to credit, distance to firewood sources, and access to electronic media had a significantly positive influence on the adoption of biogas technology. Conversely, distance to water sources and access to electricity had a significantly negative influence on the adoption of biogas technology. Conclusions: Biogas technology mostly appears in privileged households having a better socioeconomic status and other resource endowments. The beneficiaries are thus households that can afford the higher initial investment costs for bio-digester installation, maintenance services and purchasing bio-digester spare parts; as well as households that have access to credit facilities, water sources for adequate water supply, markets for purchasing spare parts and electronic media for information, and also households residing far away from firewood sources.

The current status, challenges and prospects of using biomass energy in Ethiopia

“…However, key informants and user households viewed that the cooking and bio-fertilization perspectives of the technology have been overlooked due to the unavailability of efficient biogas cooking stoves for baking and inadequate training for bio-slurry management. Findings from previous studies show that the African continent utilizes very little of the potential of biogas technology due to the inability to exploit its full potential [ 75 , 76 ].…”

Effects of the German Renewable Energy Sources Act and environmental, social and economic factors on biogas plant adoption and agricultural land use change

“…Unlike most of the previous research, which uses farm-level survey data [34,36,60,61], our study used county-level data to quantify the impact of environmental, social and economic factors on the adoption of biogas production and choice of plant size. Different annual CG county-level panel data were collected from various sources for the period from 2000 to 2014.…”

The potential of biogas technology in fuelwood saving and carbon emission reduction in Central Rift Valley, Ethiopia

“…This result suggests that annual income was among the factors that affect the adoption of the technology. More annual revenue, according to many academics, could provide more economic capacity and legibility for the installation and maintenance of a biogas plant [ 13 , 25 , 37 ]. Household heads with higher annual income and livestock have a higher likelihood of adopting biogas technology, according to research conducted by [ 25 , 38 ].…”

“…A biogas digester is one renewable energy option that has the potential to provide low-cost energy without the need to harvest wood [ 11 , 12 ]. Biogas is a renewable energy source produced in domestic bio-digesters that uses anaerobic digestion to turn waste from animals and humans into biogas for cooking and lighting [ 13 ]. It produces 60–70 percent methane (CH4) and 30–40 % carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), as well as 1–5% hydrogen and trace amounts of nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, oxygen, water vapor, and slurry [ 14 ].…”