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Opportunities and barriers to biogas adoption in Malawi

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posted on 2024-10-04, 15:14 authored by Regina Kulugomba, Harold Mapoma, Gregory Gamula, Richard BlanchardRichard Blanchard, Stanley Mlatho

Malawi has the potential to explore the utilization of biogas technology. The technology has existed in the country for decades. However, the uptake has been lower than expected. Further, there has been a high rate of dis-adoption of the installed systems. To deal with the problem, this study explored the opportunities and barriers to biogas technology to enhance biogas adoption and utilization in Malawi. Qualitative research methods using key informant interviews were employed to collect the data from biogas adopters, dis-adopters, potential adopters, and experts. A total of 22 households and 6 experts were interviewed. The findings of the study show that the country has opportunities for biogas adoption and utilization. The most mentioned opportunities were livestock farming practices, constraints to access to reliable energy sources, associated benefits of biogas technology, and land holding. However, the adoption of the technology has faced several challenges. Commonly cited barriers were the high installation and maintenance costs, inadequate feedstock, inappropriate dissemination approaches, lack of training after installation services and expertise, lack of reliable water sources, absence of ownership, lack of cooperation amongst institutions in-volved in biogas promotion, lack of a coordinating body for institutions involved in biogas dissemination, lack of standards, and socio-cultural factors. To overcome the challenges, strategies were identified, and these include the provision of incentives, loans and subsidies, provision of technical support services, having demonstration sites, employing suitable dissemination approaches, codigestion or diversification of raw materials, awareness campaigns, and collaboration amongst sectors involved in biogas dissemination.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Research Unit

  • Centre for Renewable Energy Systems Technology (CREST)

Published in

Energies

Volume

17

Issue

11

Publisher

MDPI

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The authors

Publisher statement

This article is an Open Access article published by MDPI and distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Acceptance date

2023-07-10

Publication date

2024-05-28

Copyright date

2024

eISSN

1996-1073

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Richard Blanchard. Deposit date: 14 July 2023

Article number

2591

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