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Assessment of Feedstock Options for Biofuels Production in Ghana

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Assessment of Feedstock Options for Biofuels Production in Ghana Journal of Sustainable Bioenergy Systems, 2013, 3, 119-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jsbs.2013.32017 Published Online June 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jsbs) Assessment of Feedstock Options for Biofuels Production in Ghana Francis Kemausuor, Joseph Oppong Akowuah, Emmanuel Ofori Department of Agricultural Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana Email: [email protected] Received March 9, 2013; revised April 10, 2013; accepted May 10, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Francis Kemausuor et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution Li- cense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT In the wake of climate change and increasing fossil fuel prices, biofuels are becoming attractive to agricultural depend- ent economies in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions of the world. This study evaluates the energy production poten- tial of biomass resources grown on the available arable agricultural land under two principal scenarios: using 2.5% and 5% of the available arable land for energy crop expansion. Using conservative biofuel yields from crops in the sub-re- gion, a 2.5% of uncultivated arable land dedicated to four traditional crops grown in Ghana namely maize, cassava, sweet sorghum and oil palm could potentially replace 9.3% and 7.2% of transportation fuels by 2020 and 2030 respec- tively. Using 5% of the uncultivated arable land to cultivate the above four crops and jatropha could potentially produce biofuel to replace 17.3% of transport fuels by 2020 and 13.3% by 2030. In order to enrol such a scheme, government is encouraged to put in place appropriate structures to ensure that, the industry meet international sustainability standards. Keywords: Biofuels; Feedstock; Ghana 1. Introduction tion in 2010. Ethanol’s contribution is largely responsible for the increase in biofuel production. Together, Brazil As energy demand grows, self-sufficiency in energy re- and the US contributed about 90% of global ethanol pro- quirement has become critical to the socio-economic de- duction with the European Union contributing about 53% velopment of most developing countries. The growth in of all biodiesel in 2010. Global demand for biofuel is energy demand due to rapid industrialization and socio- projected to increase to about 183.8 billion litres by 2015 economic growth require huge investments to meet them. with ethanol expected to contribute about 80% of the For decades now, fossil oil has contributed immensely to total [9]. Already, several countries have adopted policies meeting these demands. However, increasing concerns to promote liquid biofuel development led by the US, the about emissions from fossil fuels and the impending peak EU, Brazil, Canada, Australia and Japan [10]. A growing oil theory [1-4] have stimulated interest for alternative number of developing countries, including a few African energy sources. An alternative fuel must be technically countries have also started to introduce similar policies. feasible, economically competitive, environmentally ac- Notable countries in Africa with biofuel strategies in ceptable, and readily available [5]. Biofuel produced place are South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Senegal from energy crops and other resources has been touted as and Mali. one of the viable sources of energy for the foreseeable In Ghana, a draft bioenergy policy of 2010 [11] aims future in dealing with these worldwide socioeconomic to substitute national petroleum fuels consumption with and environmental concerns [6,7]. Global production of 10% biofuel by 2020 and 20% by 2030. The policy in- biofuel has been growing rapidly in recent years, rising tends to make use of the country’s vast biomass potential from about 18 billion litres in 2000 to 105 billion litres in and resources in modern applications for the production 2010 [8]. Despite this exponential increase, biofuel still of transport fuels and electricity. Biomass already domi- represents a very small share of global energy consump- nates the energy consumption pattern in Ghana, account- tion. Biofuels provided 2.7% of all global fuel for road ing for over 63% of total energy consumed [12] but used transportation in 2010—an increase from 2% in 2009. As principally in traditional cookstoves as firewood and usual, supply is dominated by bioethanol, which ac- charcoal. Liquid biofuel use is not commercialised in the counted for approximately 82% of total biofuel produc- country but there are plans to begin commercial produc- Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JSBS 120 F. KEMAUSUOR ET AL. tion as soon as the infrastructure is in place. Plans for biodiesel production are at a more advanced stage as op- posed to those for ethanol production. The draft bio- energy policy is open to the commercial scale production of biofuel feedstocks to sustain supply but is not target- ing any specific energy crop(s) to meet the demand tar- gets. In the past, jatropha was thought to be the best feed- stock due to previous impression that it was drought re- sistant. But current research has shown that jatropha may not be the wonder crop that it was thought to be [13]. With conflicting reports on the prospects or potential of jatropha and recent revelations that it performs poorly in marginal lands [13], there is the need to perform an analysis of possible biofuel feedstock choices in order to recommend the best choices to investors and policy mak- ers. The aim of this study was to perform an analysis of the technical potential of first-generation biofuels from energy crops in Ghana. The study aims to contribute knowledge to the call from Ghana’s Energy Commission for research support to select the best biofuel feedstock options for the country. Knowledge about the technical potentials would enable a good estimation of land occu- pancy to attain biofuel targets proposed by the Energy Commission. This paper is structured into 5 sections. As part of the introduction, a review of the agricultural re- sources in the country has been presented. The method- Figure 1. Regional population density map of Ghana for ology for conducting the analysis follows the introduc- year 2010 [14]. tion after which the results is presented and discussed. Section 4 presents a brief description of the recipes for a successful biofuel industry in Ghana after which Section 5 summarises the conclusions. Agricultural Resources in Ghana Ghana is administratively divided into ten regions with a total land area of approximately 238,537 sq. km. There are 212 Districts/Municipal/Metropolitan Areas (MM- DAs), which increased from 138 in year 20001. A recent population census in 2010 estimates Ghana’s population at 24.6 million [14]. A regional population density map is shown in Figure 1. The coastal and southern parts have higher population density than the northern parts of the country. The Greater Accra region which also houses the nation’s ca- pital has the highest population density whereas the Northern region has the lowest. The Northern region has an estimated 35 persons per square kilometre with vast uncultivated arable lands. In relation to agriculture, there are six agro-ecological zones in Ghana defined on the basis of climate, reflected by the natural vegetation and influenced by the soil type (Figure 2). 1Previously there were 138 Districts/Municipal/Metropolitan Areas (MMDAs) in Ghana but these were increased to 170 in 2008. At the end of 2011, 42 new MMDAs were created bringing the total number to 212. Figure 2. Agro-ecological zone classification in Ghana. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JSBS F. KEMAUSUOR ET AL. 121 These are Rain Forest, Deciduous Forest, Transitional vated non-export crop in Ghana followed by cassava. In Zone, Coastal Savannah, Guinea Savannah and Sudan 2010, approximately 1.9 million tonnes of maize was Savannah. The characteristics of the various agro-ecolo- harvested from an area of 992 thousand ha. Maize is gical zones are shown in Table 1. Annual rainfall ranges produced in all districts in Ghana, making it the most po- from about 800 mm along the coastal savannah to 2200 pular food crop in the country. Over 13.5 million tonnes mm in the Rain forest. Annual average temperatures of cassava was produced from an area of 875 thousand range from 26.1˚C near the coast to 28.9˚C in the north- hectares in the same year. About 2 million tonnes of oil ern parts of the country. About 155,000 sq. km., approxi- palm fruit and 0.32 million tonnes of sorghum were pro- mately 65% of the total land area, is classified as agri- duced in 2010 from an area of 360 thousand hectares and cultural land area [15]. The agricultural sector is charac- 253 thousand hectares respectively. With regards to the terized by a large number of dispersed small-scale pro- trend in the cultivated area of these four crops, the pat- ducers, employing manual cultivation techniques depen- tern shows a fairly even trend over the last decade, with dent on rainfall with little or no purchased inputs but pro- marginal increase or decrease in some cases (Figure 3). viding over 90% of the food needs of the country [16]. There were notable increases in the cultivated areas of oil Farming systems vary with the six agro-ecological zones palm (96%) and maize (39%) and a fairly even trend in (Table 1). However, certain general features are discerni- the cultivated area for sorghum (Figure 3). ble throughout the country. According to [17], crop pro- Cassava is the dominant food crop in Ghana in terms duction in Ghana is hampered by land degradation, im- of production output and has remained so for the last proper field development, use of low-yielding varieties, decade (Figure 4). It is cultivated in eight of the ten re- lack of organised seed production and distribution sys- gions in the country.
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