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Chapter 2 Wood energy and livelihoods

Fuelwood and charcoal
Commercial uses
Woodfuels in the North
Conflicts and constraints
Substitution and energy mix
New applications
Woodfuel flows

Fuelwood and charcoal

Fuelwood and charcoal, the commonest forms of woodfuel, are used widely as household power sources in poor rural neighbourhoods in developing countries. In these areas, wood is sometimes traded informally or in the marketplace but the majority of users harvest it as a 'common property resource' from forests and from scattered pockets or belts of trees at field margins or roadsides and on waste or common ground. Nearly all the world's woodfuel harvest is used for cooking and this use will remain the priority of most wood energy consumers.

Worldwide, around 1.4 billion tonnes of biomass (mainly fuelwood and charcoal) were used to produce domestic energy in 1990. This statistic accounted for just over half of the wood harvested for all uses, including timber, board and pulp. Yet it was still less than 14 per cent of total world primary energy; a frugal outlay compared, for instance, with oil or coal use in generating electricity for household consumption. It is still little compared with fossil fuels but is considered one of the big renewable energy resources of the next century.

Besides directly supporting the livelihoods of subsistence users, fuelwood and charcoal also create income and jobs when traded as market commodities. Charcoal is often more sought-after in trade as it burns more efficiently than fuelwood and is easier to transport and store. Even so, its manufacture would in many cases be wasteful almost to the point of cancelling out this added value if its raw material cost was not low or negligible.

Commercial uses

In developing countries, trade in fuelwood and charcoal occurs mainly in or around urban areas or beside highways and other transportation routes. Urban fuelwood or charcoal use is not confined to domestic cooking or heating but is often essential to small and medium scale trades or industries such as baking, brewing, textile manufacture and brickmaking. Charcoal also has specific uses in heavy industry, notably in steel and alloy production. In Brazil, some 6 million tonnes of charcoal is produced every year for this purpose alone. In rural 'cottage' industries and major agricultural industries, too, fuelwood or charcoal can have viable and valuable economic uses, for instance in drying or curing tobacco, coffee and tea.

Where such businesses exist they create a consistent fuelwood demand that promises regular revenues and employment. These 'commercial' applications of wood energy can thus support new centres of rural settlement and bring beneficial aspects of market forces into play.

Unless systematically geared to woodfuel production by appropriate supply-side management, however, they can also exert a heavy strain on nearby forests, woodlands and plantations - and harm their own economic prospects. Compared with these intensive and sustained requirements, rural consumption of fuelwood and charcoal as subsistence fuels generally has a diffuse and sporadic impact on the natural condition of forests and trees, unless less sustainable land use practices enter the picture.

Reducing fuelwood and charcoal consumption through efficient conversion devices that put available wood energy to more frugal use not only takes pressure off the natural resource. It also means industry and commerce can afford to pay more for less wood and thus organised woodfuel production becomes more profitable.

FIGURE 5 Fuelwood and charcoal: the world picture

FAO fuelwoed + charcoal consumption is compared with a total biomass consumption for each country

Source: Forestry Statictics Today for Tomorrow 1961-1991

FIGURE 6 Woodfuels and forest resources: national examples

Source: WEC Survey of Energy Resources, 1992

Woodfuels in the North

Though more than 70 per cent of woodfuel use is in developing countries, it plays a significant role even in relatively affluent countries of the 'North'. Here, the use of wood to fuel domestic heating boilers and for other small-scale applications is growing fast. Distinctive commercial niches or advantageous social and economic 'trade-offs' have been found which make wood a speciality fuel or energy-saving option. In France, for instance, the amount of wood used for heating in 1992 was 22 million cubic metres, almost 43 per cent of the country's wood harvest. In addition to household stoves or hearths, it was used to power industrial boilers and kilns, district heating plants or central heating boilers in public buildings and leisure facilities such as tourist lodges.

It is important to note, however, that such uses have not emerged against a background of under-development or competition for natural resources. They have evolved in countries where forests and woodlands are generally under-utilized and where people can choose among a range of energy options, especially for cooking, and have the purchasing power to buy them. Rates of population growth are relatively stable and pressure to extend farmlands has eased accordingly.

Conflicts and constraints

In many developing countries, on the other hand, resource conflicts and constraints can spoil or complicate the sustainable production and use of woodfuels.

In particular, demand for these fuels in and around towns and cities can effect rural livelihoods and environmental stability in outlying areas, where the living resource is harvested. In Somalia, for example, the inhabitants of the capital city, Mogadishu, used around 42000 tonnes (about half a tonne each) of woodfuels in 1983, mainly as charcoal. Some 17000 tonnes were consumed for domestic purposes and the rest for industrial uses or in the service sector - hospitals, schools, the armed forces, prisons and the like. The concentrated urban purchasing power of large cities such as Mogadishu makes it worthwhile for traders to transport fuels there from rural areas; thus woodfuel resources are consequently depleted at ever increasing distances from the city.

Exploitation of woodlands round Mogadishu is subject to strict official regulations, which allow only trees above a certain size to be cut, a measure designed to aid regeneration. But monitoring and enforcement of these regulations has been lax and people living near the city's main fuel supply areas now complain that the land is becoming devegetated, eroded and infertile. The cost of land restoration will not be met by the charcoal producers: they can simply afford to move away to find new sources of wood.

In this and many similar situations, the worth of fuelwood and charcoal as supports to life and trade is undermined by the adverse effects of excessive woodcutting on the land, on forests, on the sustainability of livelihoods and on rural community interests.

Various measures have been proposed to mitigate this effect but none has proved ideal. Prominent among them is the introduction of improved 'controlled combustion' stoves that cook more efficiently while using less fuel. Designed for simple construction from low-cost local materials, the new stoves have become a regular feature of household life in many areas where they have been promoted. They offer health advantages over smoky open hearths as well as gains in terms of nutrition and food hygiene. Yet they require some capital outlay on their manufacture, operation and maintenance, and cannot always cater to local cooking techniques and dietary preferences, hence their adoption has not been general.

Another noteworthy development is the introduction of schemes and incentives to produce and use more charcoal. Converting wood to charcoal is an inefficient application of woodfuel resources, yet charcoal's high thermal efficiency (around twice that of wood) and market value may justify sacrificing wood to charcoal-making in a ratio of up to 5:1. Low transport costs and ease of storage make further amends. But many experts are unconvinced of the wisdom of further promoting charcoal as an answer to domestic fuel needs.

On the production side, steps have been taken in many countries to enlarge the available stock of wood for energy production by establishing large-scale fuelwood plantations as extensions of existing forestry or agroforestry programmes. Small community woodlots run on a self-help basis to meet the requirements of specific districts or villages have also been encouraged, some in combination with charcoal production facilities. Many larger 'energy plantations' have failed to match their expected production goals, however, while the upkeep of village woodlots has often proved problematic.

Plans have also been introduced to improve the supply and distribution of wood and charcoal, from areas where woodfuel forest resources abound, to users whose energy problems are harder to solve by local means. Forestry residues and sawmill wastes can, for example, be chipped and converted to charcoal for mass sale to urban households or for general distribution. In practice, however, such outputs rarely reach the domestic user and are more often retained for recycling within industry or simply wasted.

Substitution and energy mix

In situations where land or water availability and other limiting factors make expanded production or supply of wood unrealistic, efforts have been made to utilize alternative or substitute energy sources, such as processed crop wastes or biogas from manure.

In regions where historic processes of deforestation have effectively removed fuelwood and charcoal from common use, as in some semi-arid areas of India and China, these substitutes have long since become the household energy staple. But their use as fuel can rob the land of vital soil nutrients. Rather than developing local alternatives, many countries have staked massive central investment in schemes to modernise energy use by distributing coal, kerosene and other fossil-based fuels nationwide at heavily subsidised rates, or by laying on rural electrification schemes that connect even the most isolated of villages to national power grids.

Such schemes incur heavy costs and often create environmental dilemmas. But their chief disadvantage is that they can reduce local self-reliance and fail to benefit the neediest members of society, who cannot pay even for cheap grid power and certainly not for the amount of power required for cooking. In practice, moreover, demand for fuelwood and other biofuels continues to grow even among income-earning groups that enjoy access to a number of commercial energy sources.

Wherever a choice of energy sources and uses exists, households and businesses will usually improvise the energy 'cocktail' that best suits their needs, tastes and circumstances. This variegated energy mix is often a cornerstone of the informal economic sector on which the functioning of many societies depends.

In Bangladesh, for example, though most towns have mains gas supplies and many households are connected, large numbers of urban householders nevertheless prefer to use traditional solid fuels and charcoal for cooking, as gas supply and service costs are high. Biomass in various forms including fuelwood and charcoal still provided some 70 per cent (519 PJ) of the country's entire consumption of energy in 1988, compared with 220 PJ from fossil-based fuels, mainly diesel and gas.

In the quest for sustainable livelihoods, such versatility is more often an asset than a liability. So, too, is a capacity to mix available fuels in a more literal sense. Wood or charcoal can be key ingredients in fuel mixtures or 'interfuels' which, even in rural areas, extend the range of energy choices significantly.

In parts of Sudan, for instance, fuel briquettes or pellets made from compressed sugarcane waste (bagasse) and briquettes from cotton stalks became widely available as woodfuel substitutes in the 1980s. Such products often fail to gain wide popularity but substitution can take some pressure off forest resources by catering to the needs of commercial users. The substitutes allow woodfuel use to be retained or resumed in places either wholly or as part of interfuels, incorporating tree litter, cattle dung, bagasse and charcoal in various permutations.

Substitution of fuelwood and charcoal by any means must be carefully evaluated before policy decisions are made, in view of the impact such changes could have on communities that lack the purchasing power to take advantage of alternative commodities.

One principal feature that stands out from the experiences of the past decade is the continuing viability of fuelwood and charcoal as convenient, appropriate and popular energy 'carriers' for various modern uses, commercial or non-commercial, in many parts of the world.

Far from treating them as anachronisms, to be replaced in due course by more sophisticated energy sources, it makes sense to factor them into energy planning at all levels of technical and economic development and to take proper steps now to safeguard future wood energy resources in the form of living forests and trees.

New applications

In addition to fuelwood, charcoal and solid fuel mixtures that include wood in one form or another, new wood energy technologies of outstanding potential for sustainable development are now emerging in developed and developing countries alike.

They include wood-fired combined heat and power (CHP) systems and decentralised power plants that provide competitive and reliable electricity for household and other uses on a village scale, at a cost broadly comparable with that of unsubsidised grid power.

These and other new forms of decentralised energy production from wood are described in greater detail later in this report. Modern applications of woodfuels in industry will also be outlined and evaluated. All have some bearing, directly or indirectly, on the creation and maintenance of livelihoods for individuals and families, as well as on economic growth and environmental care. The essence of sustainable development thinking is that these factors are not separate but mutually inclusive. Planners, decision makers and achievers now face the challenge of rebuilding policies and practices to take heed of all three.

In some cases, where crop and agro-industrial residues are available, such as rice husks, groundnut shells, sugarcane bagasse or cotton stalks, these can be substituted for woodfuels as feedstock for generating electricity, or formed into solid fuel briquettes for industrial and household use.

FIGURE 7 Pattern of fuelwood flow

Source: Woodfuel Flows. RWEDP. 1994

FIGURE 8 Pattern of charcoal flow

Source: Woodfuel Flows, RWEDP, 1994

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