Problem:

The effect of deforestation is obvious everywhere in Uganda and African at large.

What once was the forested “Pearl of Africa” is quickly becoming as denuded of forests as Ethiopia and Kenya and the rest of East Africa, where harvesting of firewood for making charcoal is illegal.

Charcoal is their main source of fuel of the quickly growing urban population of Uganda.  An estimated at 0.85 million tons of charcoal is consumes annually in urban Uganda, each household taking a share of one ton annually.  In aggregate, this is the same charcoal consumption of the whole of Europe.

This is simply unsustainable, and the problem is only getting worse.

Solution:

Green Charcoal is a technique that uses discarded palm kernels to extract the true value of an otherwise wasted resource such as palm kernels, rice husks, coffee husks, and maize cobs.

Goals and Objectives:

The solution aims to solve the problem of fuel scarcity for Uganda, where 90% of energy comes from biomass and only 1% from electricity, by replacing both wood charcoal and firewood with charcoal briquette and non-carbonized briquette respectively.

Implementation:

The solution is developed by Green Charcoal, a briquette manufacturing company in Uganda.

The principal product comes from milling the husks themselves where it creates a more efficient and heat-radiating briquette. It also sources other abundant, otherwise discarded agricultural waste such as coffee husks, maize (corn) cob and rice husks to make a briquette.

The carbonized briquette is dried using environmentally sustainable solar driers and packed in affordable 25kg packs.

Since briquettes are created from compressing combustible materials, they are denser, harder, and more compact. They have high specific density (1200kg/m3) and bulk density (800kg/m3) compared to 60 to 180 kg/m3 of loose biomass. Thus, they offer a more concentrated form of energy than firewood or charcoal.

The remaining nuts are milled to get cold pressed vegetable fats and palm kernel cake. It solves many problems with its circular economy approach to business, but its main focus is on solving the problem of fuel scarcity for local populations.

Achievements

In order to make one tonne of charcoal, 88 medium sized trees have to be cut down.

In the last three years, we have sold over 800 tonnes of briquette saving over 70,000 trees from being cut down to provide charcoal and firewood.

Partners:

 Fledge, Etifor, Ecostar, University of Padova and Ministry of Water & Environment, Uganda