Assessing Sustainability of Bioenergy Systems in Developing Countries: Methodological Development and Application

Abstract

Close to a half of the global population is currently deprived of clean and reliable energy for cooking. Majority of the energy poor live in developing countries where use of traditional biomass is prevalent and associated with several social, economic, environmental and technological challenges. Recently, United Nations General Assembly emphasised the importance of access to sustainable energy to all, most especially in developing countries. It noted that access to clean and reliable energy is critical to meeting the millennium development goals and ensuring sustainable development. This suggests the need for more efforts to incorporate sustainability concerns in planning energy systems in developing countries. This could lead to the identification of more sustainable technologies for cooking, and also provides benchmarks to help monitor progress towards sustainable development of energy systems. To achieve these objectives, availability of suitable tools to help policy and decision makers in selecting energy systems in developing countries would be very critical. However, planning for sustainability is a very intricate endeavour and presents a knowledge gap especially in developing countries where it is a relatively new concept. This study was therefore carried out with the aim of developing an appropriate sustainability assessment method for selecting bioenergy systems for cooking in developing countries