Energy need assessment and preferential choice survey of rural people in Bangladesh

Abstract: This study is a part of a poly generation project which will use animal waste or agricultural waste to produce biogas and will provide cooking gas, electricity and arsenic free clean water for drinking in rural areas of Bangladesh.  The study mainly analyzes the cooking and lighting energy demand of households across different income groups in a village named “Pani Para” in the Faridpur district in Bangladesh and also looks at the potential of biogas in the village. It has been done by adopting case study method and conducting a survey in the village using a questionnaire. Fuel mix across different income groups for meeting their cooking and lighting energy needs have also been studied along with socio-economic situation of the villagers and their preferences to change their current cooking fuel utilization patterns. Various scenarios like variation in fuel consumption patterns, priority of income expenditure and access to fuel with income level have been examined. The study also focuses to analyze the awareness of the villagers about biogas technology and their willingness to contribute for the poly generation project along with the willingness of households to pay for embracing change in current cooking and lighting fuels. Biomass potential i.e. cow dung and agricultural waste is also calculated in the surveyed village along with the production of biogas from the available biomass resources. The scenarios to provide the cooking gas, electricity and clean water through biogas poly generation project from the available resources are also investigated. Analysis reveals that the total energy consumption (cooking and lighting) increases with the increase in the income level among the households. Average household cooking and lighting energy demand by low, medium and high income groups is 8492 kWh/yr, 9789 kWh/yr and 14806 kWh/yr respectively. Cooking energy demand and agricultural waste consumption also show an increasing trend with the increase in land holding size. Among the income expenditure priorities food is one of the most important priorities and energy being less important due to availability of biomass at little or no cost. Awareness of biogas technology among the households and willingness to contribute for the poly generation plant shows an increasing trend with the increase in education level. The study shows that there is a positive response of the villagers for being willing to embrace the change in the current cooking patterns as well as welcoming new technologies that could support such a change. It was found that the cow dung resource in the village is not enough to produce sufficient biogas for the poly generation project. With the incorporation of the agricultural waste with the cow dung, biogas production comes quite close to requirement of the poly generation plant but however could not suffice it completely due to the lack of raw material in the studied village. In that case the scenario of providing electricity and clean water to all the villagers and providing all the three facilities to the 2/3rd of households is investigated. 1/3rd of the low income households then could meet their cooking demands by provision of improved cooking stoves as cooking gas could not be provided to them due to limited feedstock. The study shows that despite of the fact that cooking and lighting energy needs increase with income but there is not much variation in the fuel mix and almost everyone in the village rely on biomass to meet their energy demand. It is because there is very limited access to the modern fuel for cooking and no electricity access in the village, so the households have to rely on the traditional fuels.