Bioenergy

Small-Scale Bioenergy Initiatives: Brief description and preliminary lessons on livelihood impacts from case studies in Asia, Latin America and Africa

While a lot of the world's attention over the last couple of years has focused on liquid biofuel for transport (primarily ethanol and biodiesel), this study explores another aspect of bioenergy. It looks at the impacts of small-scale bioenergy initiatives on the livelihoods of rural people. It briefly describes and draws on preliminary lessons learned from 15 case studies in 12 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The study was carried out by Practical Action Consulting and in collaboration with the PISCES Project (Policy Innovation Systems for Clean Energy Services).

• FAO press release
• executive summary 
• full document
• powerpoint presentation

Events

E-mail conference results
The FAO Working Group on Biotechnology and the FAO Working Group on Bioenergy organized a moderated e-mail conference (10 November - 14 December) on "The role of agricultural biotechnologies for production of bioenergy in developing countries". Sixty percent of the posted messages were by participants living in developing countries.

• The background document
• Messages from the conference
• Contact biotech-admin@fao.org for further information or to request all the messages as a single e-mail (size 135 KB)

FAO and bioenergy

Bioenergy and biofuel development have been issues of importance on FAO's agenda for decades. The topics are drawing attention again because of global concerns following high energy prices, environmental degradation, sustainability of current energy systems and the competition of food crops versus energy crops. A careful consideration of these and other factors and their linkages to bioenergy development must be carried out at local, national and international levels, based on proper information and understanding.

The access to adequate and affordable energy is one of the basic requirements for guaranteeing the wellbeing and development of rural populations on a sustainable basis. Nearly two billion people, mostly in rural areas of developing countries, are without electricity and rely on burning fuelwood for their household activities.

Bioenergy in general and wood energy in particular are the dominant sources of energy for about half of the world's population. FAO's wood energy programme promotes sustainable wood energy systems as a contribution to sustainable forest management, livelihoods and food security.