Burkina Faso Energy Situation

Overview Burkina Faso   800px-Flag of Burkina Faso.svg.png   83x83px Capital Ouagadougou Official language(s) French Government Semi-Presidential Republic President Blaise Compaoré Prime Minister Tertius Zongo Total area 274,200 km2 Population 15,746,232 (2009 estimate)  14,017,262 (2006 census) GDP (nominal) $8.105 billion (2009 estimate) GDP Per capita $564 (2009 estimate) Currency West African CFA franc (XOF) Time zone (UTC+0) Calling code +226

Energy situation In Burkina Faso, more than 80 % of the energy supply derives from biomass (mainly firewood and charcoal). In rural areas nealy all energy consumed is biomass based. Hence the national average is a consumption of 0,69 kg of firewood per person per day. This ratio can rise in some areas up to more than 1 kg, e.g. if there is no incentive to save fuel or if moisture in the woodfuel reduces the efficiency hence causing a higher woodfuel consumption. Urban households prefer charcoal to wood because it is perceived as more clean and modern. However, because of the application of low efficient technologies in the charcoal production, the use of charcoal in towns is implicating a high wood consumption in rural areas. In recognition of this effekt, the charcoal production has been re-organized and concentrated in five production areas in 2005. Still, the impact of inefficient charcoal production can be observed. Despite the population growth,  there are no real woodfuel shoretages felt in most parts of the country at this point in time. Rural families can pick firewood on their way back from the fields without the need of specific wood collection trips towards far away forests. In the North, the situation is different. The scarcity of firewood is even felt in rural areas. In the towns, where wood and charcoal are commercial products, the scarcity is reflected by rising fuel prices thus affecting the poverty situation of most households. The most used alternative energy for household cooking is gas (LPG).Nearly 35 % of households in big towns and still some 10 – 25 % in smaller towns own LPG equipment. The government officially supports a further increase in the use of LPG for domestic cooking. However, this is unlikely to happen. Already now, LPG only accounts for 0,4 % of the urban consumption due to lack of LPG provisions. The government fails to provide further funding for subsidies required to keep the LPG affordable. And for new customers, the investmentcost for the equipment is another disincentive next to the unreliability of the LPG supply. With the new development of plantoil stoves, another option for a fuelswitch is available. Unfortunately this stove is yet still too expensive and the fuel supply is not yet guaranteed. Hence it does not offer an alternative to the use of woodfuel for cooking at this point of time. If the fuelswitch (woodfuel to LPG) is not realistic, the alternative for "modern energy for cooking" is the provision of more efficient woodfuel cook stoves.The baseline stoves for firewood (3-stone-stove) and charcoal (simple metal stove called "le Malgache") are very cheap. Hence any "new" technology has to compete with the expectation of low product prices. In addition, stoves have to be of small hight and very stable because of th vigorous preparation process of the traditional daily food (a millet porridge that has to be "beaten" during preparation). There are a number of improved stoves which were introduced in Burkina Faso at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. They take this aspects into account, and cost today around 3 – 4 €. Efficiency tests have shown that they reduce the specific consumption of fuel for the preparation of traditional meals according to the definistion of "modern energy" of the EnDev program. Until the beginning of FAFASO, there was no self-sustaining market established for these improved cook stoves as  previous programs did focus on free distributions and more or less voluntary use of the stoves. Although the stoves were known in the country for 20-30 years, they were not really to be found or used in the households at the onset of FAFASO. There are today also factory finished firewood and charcoal cook stoves available if import from China. Many of them are not really adjusted to the local cooking equipment (round bottom cast aluminium cooking pots) and the cooking practice (vigorous cooking). Furthermore, the investment costs are too high to really compete with the very cheap baseline stoves which are currently in use. Comparing all the options it was desided to build on the existing technical concept of the known improved stoves in the country and to promote them with the application of a new, market based dissemination approach.Hence the challange is the creation of a strong awareness for the need of firewood saving in and outside the big cities as well as the support of the producers to supply of stable, efficient, durable and affordable stoves even for poorer parts of the population even if they are living in remote parts of the country. Policy framework, laws and regulations In Burkina Faso‘s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) there is no specific mention of energy or environment issues. The current version (2009-2011) has chapters on "reduction of pollution" and on "sustainable management of natural resources" without reference to energy issues. The solutions proposed are only dealing with the enlargement of urban street capacities and the maintenance of natural resources for pastoralist respectively. From 2010 onwards, the PRSP format shall be replaced by a "Strategy of accelerated growth that focusses merely exclusively on economic growth relying on the development of some urban economic pools and counting on a "trickle down effect" for the urban poor and the rural areas. More indicative for further DGIS interventions are the regional development plans and strategies that are mostly considering environmental and energy issues in the sense that they are aiming at a sustainable management to assure provision even for future generations. In its 2008 version, the development plan of the capital‘s region lists the "access to modern energy" as a measure of poverty reduction. According to this, FAFASO has already undertaken joint activities with the Regional Council of the Central (the capital‘s) region to enlarge access to improved stoves to wider population groups, mainly in the semi-rural parts around the capital. Regarding access to biomass, the environmental services have as mission to regulate the access to woodfuel (and to tax any fresh wood cut anyway) even for individual cutting in the villages, but they are too poorly equipped to assume this role. Nevertheless, and as a "heritage" of the 1980s revolutionary period, the control of big scale wood transport is still functional (in large parts of the country: only specially accredited trucks (painted in green and white) are allowed to transport fire-wood and they are still controlled on the overland streets. For the charcoal sector, the government decreed, in 2005, a nationwide stop of artisanal production for several months and gave afterwards licenses to some defined production areas. This system seems to work more or less. Institutional set up in the energy sector, activities of other donors Since the 1970s, Burkina Faso has been one of the leading countries in the sub region in regards to the development and the dissemination of improved stoves. As a result, the country has today a huge experience in terms of technology. A considerable choice of adapted stove types is available. On the other hand, most of the projects of the past have been donor or state driven – they collapsed the moment when the donor retired or state politics changed (as it was the case after the revolution in the 1980s). This lead to an ambivalent situation: on the one hand there is a kind of institutional setup whith a history of involvement of (failed) stove promotion programs. These institutions assume and demand that new stove programs in the country should be forced to be implemented with or through them. At the same time, they do not have the financial and personal capacities to fill this self-assumed role. On the research and technology side, the "Institute of Research in Applied Sciences and Technologies (IRSAT)", a department of the Ministry of Secondary Schools and Research, has kept its standards and is still the only institution capable to accredit improved stoves and defining stove standards. While IRSAT is continuing to perform well in this respect, it has no capacities (and no ambitions) in stove dissemination. On the other side, the Ministry of Environment is seeing itself as the agency to be implied in stoves‘ dissemination, eventual assisted by the Ministry of Women‘s Rights. In this, the Ministry of Environment is contested by other governmental departments (e.g. the Ministry of Energy, not only in charge with a World Bank Programme for the Dissemination of improved stoves at the moment, but also responsible for the implementation of the national strategy for domestic energies, developed by CILSS-PREDAS). In reality, the Ministry of Environment so far failed to provide evidence about their capacity to successfully lead sustainable stove programmes in the past. All strategies relying on the Ministry of Environment for the dissemination of stoves broke down at latest when the donor retired (despite the efforts of the donors to strengthen the Ministry‘s capacities). Most of the dissemination strategies in the past relied on subsidies (with the argument that Burkina‘s poor population could not afford to buy stoves at their real prises) and passed by the Ministry of Environment and several NGOs to spread the stoves. Used to ever new upcoming project, none of these actors was, at the beginning of FAFASO‘s activities in 2005, really willing to adhere to a strategy that directs the use of the project funds rather to the producers and other actors of the private sector than to state or civil society institutions in order to establish subsidy-free supply-demand systems for stoves. Therefore, FAFASO has since the beginning of its activities in 2006 fully relied on structures in the private sector and followed a commercial approach without involving any of the "traditional stove promoting agencies in the country". This was based on the assumption that the producers will be motivated to participate in the promotion of the stoves as this contributes to their income and on the users readiness to pay for the stoves once they realise the benefit of their use. With the extension of activities in rural areas, FAFASO started in 2008 to give it another try to involve government services. Provincial divisions of the Ministry of Environment were invited to play a role in the training and dissemination process in rural areas. However, the ministry‘s agents failed to deliver at all – even when they have been promised to get paid for this. With its overall experience (65.000 stoves sold without subsidies and without government structures as intermediates, proved inactivity of stately agents), FAFASO has now managed to deliver the proof that a market based approach without subsidy for the dissemination of improved cook stoves can succeed in Burkina Faso.This has strenghened the position of the project in the negotiation of partnerships with the state actors in favour of a real sustainable approach. Beside of some little NGOs, the biggest other actor in the sector is a World Bank Programme (PASE), officially started in February 2008, launched in October of the same year and having as objective the dissemination of 250.000 stoves within five years. Even if PASE always pointed out that they will not pay direct subsidies on the sales prises, there exists the danger that they will change the strategy in face of a situation, where with the ever closer approaching end of the project durationt, the number of sold stoves still remains rather small. The pressure to achieve the goal might motivate the PASE management to revert to the old concept of subsidy as an accelerator for stove dissemination - despite the known consequences. This constitutes a real threat for FAFASOs long term success. Other major activities in the country financed by BMZ or DGIS In Burkina Faso there are four other DGIS programmes dealing mainly with Solar Home Systems or biofuel (jatropha). On the BMZ side, several partners can be identified: Having been, during its 2nd phase, part of GTZ ―Decentralisation Programme, FAFASO has acquired some kinds of experience in the communal sectors and a huge knowledge of communal actors and procedures, Concerning the stoves‘ segment, the KfW component FICOD has been contected for the disseminatíon of stoves for institutions, e.g. for school canteens, The GTZ ―Health and Human Rights Programme is a potential partner also with respect to school canteens, but also for the realisation of awareness campaigns on health issues related to stoves, The GTZ ―Agricultural programme has a big focus on the transformation and commercialization of agricultural products. They already manifested their interest in integrating improved stoves for professional use (especially the shea butter cashew stoves still to be conceived by IRSAT) in their production chain.