Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi

Wood and its charcoal derivative occupy top position in the order of major fuels consumed by the Nation, It is estimated that it constitutes 72 percent of total energy consumed as fuel. In terms of useful energy recovered from the fuels, estimates are that wood constitutes 41 percent while petroleum products constitute 59% of the total useful energy consumption in the country. This is due primarily to the low energy recovery efficiencies of wood appliances vis-à-vis appliances used for other fuels. It is shown that locally employed charcoal making methods are also energy inefficient but other known processes are relatively expensive alternatives. It seems that wood will continue to be a dominant fuel for the foreseeable future and work should be directed at inter alia, improving wood-burning appliance efficiencies, charcoal stove efficiencies, and employing charcoal making processes which allow up to 70 percent energy recovery instead of the present methods which generally allow less than 10 percent energy recovery. Due to higher capital costs and the inherent larger capacities of such processing devices community scale plant sizes are suggested in preference to the very small scale household operations. Such plants would open up opportunities for manufacturing of acetic acid, methanol, and possibly other chemicals from wood and stimulate development of local technological capacity in addition to charcoal fuel production.