1.0 Introduction
About fifty percent of the ten million rural household lack access to electricity. To improve this situation, the government approved in 1996 a plan to electrify sixty percent of the households by 2000 and seventy percent by 2010. Despite an aggressive grid bases rural electrification program, there will remain over 3million rural household having no access to electricity in 2010.
Nigeria is well endowed with renewable energy resources. Which could be used to generate electricity to serve rural communities and the national grid in an effective, economic and environmentally way. Hydropower potential for small-scale generation (under 10 mw/site) is estimated at about 2,000 mw. With sugar and rice production expanding rapidly, opportunities exist for economic power generation using bagasse and rice husk. Solar radiation levels are good in the southern and central regions (with an average sunshine duration of 2,750 hours/year). Wind speeds are adequate to good in the coastal arrears and offshore islands. Over the past two decades many pilot projects have been undertaken in Vietnam to demonstrate the technical feasibility of renewable energy technologies for remote power supply. These demonstration projects have built indigenous technical capacity in small hydro, solar PV and small wind turbine.
The infrastructure facilities in Vietnam are adequate to manufacture heated-die screw-press briquetting machines based on adaptation and modification of foreign briquetting technologies. With this background, the sida-funded project attempted to develop a market for briquette and briquetting machines in the country.
To gather expertise in the technology, institute of energy of Vietnam sent researchers to AIT as well as to Bangladesh institute of technology (BIT) Khulna. The researchers gained hand-on exercise in the operation and maintenance of briquetting machines.
Sequel to that, the document is the result of a mission to Lukla/mosi (8,000ft./2634m) and Khumjing (11,8000ft,3882m) in the klaumbu region and contains observations about the use of the beehive charcoal briquette stove for cooking and space heating. The beehive charcoal briquette stove has the potential to become a practical source of renewable energy (RE) for domestic use, hotel owners and trekkers in high altitude camping grounds. A currently large amount of kerosene is being brought into the region to satisfy the need for cooking energy and for use in Everest base camp. The observations in this report are related to the potential use of biomass charcoal briquettes and improved briquette stoves at high altitude in Nepal. With proper application of the available technology, biomass briquettes can be a means of providing a convenient source of energy for cooking and space heating, substituting the need for kerosene which is a no-renewable energy source for busijised by the Nepalese government. The need to improve the locally manufactured biomass charcoal briquettes has been also identified by WWF Nepal programme. The same problems in the supply of energy exist in similar high mountain regions; such as the conservation areas managed by the WWF-Nepal programme and the king mahendra trust for nature conservation. The charcoal briquettes are manufactured from agricultural residue and forest waste products. High firewood consumption for domestic cooking and heating purposes is depleting forest reserves because at the high altitudes, where tree growth is considerably slower than at the lower altitudes such as in the terai, regeneration of firewood cannot meet the demand.
Energy availability and efficient supply make up the engine of economic development. Fortunately, Nigeria is blessed with abundant energy resources; oil, gas, coal wood, biomass geothermal, solar, wind nuclear (radio-active) and hydropower. Unfortunately, only the gas and oil resources have been developed to the stage of over dependence for the country's industrialization process at the negligence of the other abundant energy resources such as coal, in spite of this, the country has continued to suffer from indeciduate and irregular supply of us able energy for industrial, agricultural and domestic applications. Moreover commercial energy in Nigeria is produced and delivered at a cost most Nigerians can ill afford. As a result, a greater percentage of the growing population have resorted to dependence on the country's forest resources as a source of fuel for agricultural, domestic and small scale industrial activities in semi-urban and rural areas. This in turn has given rise to deforestation with its attendant environmental degradation of desertification in the Northern parts of the country and soil erosion and loss of topsoil fertility in the south.
Of all the available energy resources in the country, coal and coal derivatives such as smokeless coal Briquettes have been shown to have the highest potential for use as suitable alternative to fuel wood (firewood) and there fore will serve as the most direct and effective method of combating deforestation in the country.
