August 04, 2003
Renewable Energy in Mali
Ibrahim Togola and Tom Burrell from the Mali Folkecenter gave us some useful statistics on energy use in Mali, and the hurdles facing renewable energy projects. For a country whose arable land is seriously threatened by desertification, it was amazing to discover that wood and charcoal sales in Mali represent an annual business of approximately 10 billion CFA (US$14 million).
Although some of the wood and charcoal is imported from neighboring Senegal, Guineau and Côte d'Ivoire, the vast majority is produced locally. On the road south to Bougouni, we passed at least a dozen Peugeot minitrucks groaning under loads of firewood stacked nearly twenty feet high. Even as we headed north to Mopti, deep in the Sahel where trees and even bushes are scarce, most villages we passed through would have at least few cords of wood stacked for sale near the community speed-bump.
In the various quartiers (neighborhoods) of Bamako, it was easy to find wood and charcoal for sale, usually stored in big heaps along side roads.
Out in the villages, we'd see women returning for foraging expeditions with enormous tree-limbs balanced on their heads. In Dogon country, Siby and other rural regions, we were struck by how tidy the orchards and stands of trees seemed to be. No stumps sticking up, no dead branches poking out of tree trunks or laying on the ground. Everything was collected for firewood.
This use of wood has serious consequences for renewable energy projects. First, firewood (or "foraged biomass", to use a more technical term) is considered to be a free resource--you don't have to pay anything to go out and chop it down or otherwise collect it and haul it back to town. Accordingly, people selling firewood in the villages will accept almost any price for the excess wood they sell by the roadside.
Cheap firewood makes competition difficult for renewable sources like solar energy, wind and biofuels like jatropha oil and biomethane. The problem is that firewood prices don't account for externalities, ie those consequences of consuming nonrenewables that don't immediately appear in the bottom line. In this case, externalities include problems like deforestation, soil erosion and desertification.
Mali, of course, isn't alone in failing to include externalities in the total cost of their nonrenewable energy sources. Renewables like solar and wind power have only recently started to make economic sense (in terms of dollars per kilowatt-hour) in markets like the United States.
It's also important to point out that, for reasons of economic constraints, West Africa as a whole is far ahead of many industrialized markets in terms of other renewable indicators. For example, from the air at night almost all of the lights of Bamako have an unexpected blue tint. These are, in fact, thousands of fluorescent lightbulbs--and they stand out because there are so few sodium streetlamps. So far on this trip, we've yet to see a single incandescent bulb. Tube fluorescents are the most common, and 8, 13 and 18 watts are the most common sizes. Although the output spectrum isn't quite the same, an 18-watt fluorescent bulb is roughly the equivalent of a 100-watt incandescent bulb.
Posted by Timothy Prestero at August 4, 2003 02:44 PM
