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Biomass energy in developing countries
Biomass energy in developing countries William Ramsay
Energy from biomass already forms an important part of the world economy, especially in the form of traditional fuels. The author explains how the resource base is very large even under present technologies and may be larger under better techniques of cultivation or through genetic engineering. Gasification of wood and the production of charcoal are two of the most promising bioenergy technologies, with the production of alcohol from sugarcane a stronger contender under present world sugar market conditions. There are particular constraints for all renewable fuels, including bioenergy such as uncertainty in oil prices - plus the special problems of competition with agriculture and confusion of planning authority. This paper examines the present role of biomass energy, the resource base for future development, some promising energy conversion technologies and uses and a few constraints on the development of bioenergy. Keywords: Biomass; Renewable energy; Economic development Bioenergy is one of the primary sources of fuel for millions of households now burning wood and charcoal, primarily for household cooking, t It is also an exceedingly promising alternative energy source for supplying modern sector needs in the developing countries. This alternative, however, involves a number of perplexing anomalies. The world is full of unused forest and grassland. Yet every day people are forced to curtail cooking because of shortages of fuelwood. Growing trees is one of the oldest of human arts but establishing viable plantations of trees for fuelwood has proved difficult in many countries. The potential of biomass as an easily stored form of solar energy is enormous however.
William Ramsay is with the National Academy of Engineering, 2101 Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC 20418.
326
PRESENT ROLE OF BIOMASS Biomass is the predominant fuel in the household sector in almost every developing country. 2 Its use is highly correlated with the degree of rural population, with biomass providing by far the largest share of household energy in countries with large rural areas. It accounts for over 90% of total household use in the poorer countries of Africa and Central America. This biomass fuel resource may be in the form of fuelwood or charcoal, crop waste or animal waste. Its most critical function is in cooking, with lighting being the other principal use. It is noteworthy that many other energy functions in rural households, such as refrigeration, fans and of course television sets and radios, cannot be supplied by traditional biomass fuel forms - with the minor exception of charcoal-heated irons. Although overall the major emphasis may seem to be rural, there is a large proportion of urban energy supplied by fuelwood and charcoal, even in very large cities. In a survey of the city of Hyderabad in India, for example, nearly 30% of the households sampled used wood for some or all of their cooking needs. 3 Furthermore, industrial use of fuelwood and charcoal is already important. Fuelwood or charcoal is already widely used in tobacco curing and brick making and in such commercial sector enterprises as restaurants. Furthermore, large agricultural operations such as sugar making and coffee processing often use biomass residues, while charcoal has had an important - but exceptional - use in the steel making industry in Brazil. The present pattern of use of biomass fuels has been conditioned of course by the prices and availabilities of alternative fuels. It is one of the ironies of the history of the past decade or so that many governments had by 1972 subsidized kerosene for rural use in order to discourage the use of biomass and hence discourage the process of deforestation. Over a decade later, many of the
0301-4215/85/040326-04503.00 © 1985 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd
Biomass energy in developing countries
same countries have seen themselves forced to reduce or remove these subsidies in order to cut down on their high bills for oil imports.
RESOURCE BASE FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT The theoretical resource base for supplying biomass energy is very large. The potential yield from forests in the developing world has been estimated in one study to fall within the range of 500 million to 5 billion metric tons of oil equivalent (mtoe) per year. 4 This estimate counts only presently forested areas, and the lower end of the estimate tries to take account of the fact that many areas classified as 'forest' actually have very little biomass. The existing resource base should also include not only trees but also crop and animal waste and probably underutilized natural grassland. The total for the grassland has not been estimated; the total amounts of waste have been estimated, under somewhat arbitrary assumptions, as about 800 mtoe. 5 For waste resources the problem is knowing which waste is actually 'waste'. Much waste is actually used as fuel in rural households - the use of animal waste in India being particularly well documented - but much crop waste material is also used for soil amendments or for building materials and is not really freely available as a bioenergy resource. The amount of biomass potentially available varies greatly between countries. Even on a continent-by-continent basis, Table 1 shows that Africa, for example, has a much greater potential than Asia. Considering only present stands of timber and amounts of waste is almost irrelevant. If natural forests were to be used in an expansion of bioenergy use, vast programmes of replanting would have to take place. In practice - mostly because of existing difficulties in understanding the ecology of tropical forests - the future of both trees and field crops, such as sugarcane grown for the production of fuel Table 1. Potential annual energy resources from existing forest and waste biomass in developing countries.
Latin America Africa Asia
Total potential annual energy from biomass (mtoe)
1976 commercial energy consumption (mtoe)
Ratio of
370-2000 280-1900 650-1700
218 43 251
1.7-9.2 6.5-44 2.6-618
1:2
Source: Dunkerley, Ramsay, Gordon and Cecelski, op cit, Ref 4.
ENERGY POLICY August 1985
alcohol, probably lies in the conversion of presently underutilized pasture lands or wastelands to tree plantations or in other specific plantings of biomass for energy. Many 'community woodlot programmes' have tried to follow this strategy by growing trees on local underutilized acreage, particularly in Africa but also in Asia and Latin America. While most such efforts have probably been failures or only marginal successes, there are some outstanding exceptions. In particular, in the Indian state of Gujarat, the Forestry Department has combined programmes of roadside plantings, village woodlots, plantations at schools and hospitals and tree growing by farmers, especially in conjunction with the growth of compatible field crops (agroforestry). The present row upon row of trees stretching along most of the primary and secondary road systems of Gujarat is an obvious testimonial to this programme. Probably more significant is the uncounted number of tons of fuelwood (and also poles for construction) produced by farmers using seedlings supplied by the Forest Department. The future should show more promise. Even the use of techniques already popular in the classical era, such as constructing simple earthen impoundments in the desert, could conceivably lead to establishing viable tree plantations in arid areas. Another intriguing possibility is that current research in genetic engineering may eventually make possible the development of plants with extremely large yields or, probably even more important, the creation of new varieties (or species) that can thrive in environments that are presently not conducive to cultivation.
PROMISING CONVERSION TECHNOLOGIES AND END USES In the first flush of enthusiasm for renewable energies, many different kinds of biomass technologies and new end uses were proposed. At this point, one can probably discern some 'shake-out' of the options - some appear now more viable in cost and scope than others. However, the following conclusions about technologies must be hedged somewhat because of ongoing research in various areas. Direct combustion of wood is of prime interest, because technically it appears to be such a well established and familiar process. Indeed, a large programme of electricity generation is now being carried out in the Philippines based on fuelwood from plantations of the fast-growing leucaena tree.
327
Biomass energy in developing countries
Nevertheless, there are always some problems in handling wood and present oil furnaces have to be retrofitted to use wood in the form of logs or chips. For this reason, it may be that gasification of wood represents the real wave of the future, despite the inevitable energy losses during conversion to gas. Interest in gasification may also imply an interest in charcoal, since charcoal is a better feedstock for producing gas than wood, especially when a pure product must be derived, such as that needed for internal combustion engines. Charcoal may in itself play a larger role in replacing wood or other fuels in household and other direct combustion uses. Energy is certainly lost in turning wood into charcoal but there seems to be a natural consumer preference for charcoal at the household level. This preference is mirrored by engineering advantages in handling and combustion for larger industrial or utility process heat applications. In general a combination of gas, oils and charcoal is produced when wood is heated under restricted conditions of temperature, pressure and oxygen supply (pyrolysis). Earlier enthusiasm for using the 'char oils' that can be produced during pyrolysis has subsided because of unfavorable corrosive characteristics of the fuel. The gasification process can also be used to produce wood alcohol or methanol by reassembling the molecules in the gas by means of a catalyst. Similarly, the fermentation of grains or sugars (a biochemical process using yeasts as a catalyst) can produce grain alcohol or ethanol. Both alcohols are acceptable motor fuels. Except for some toxicity problems, which however could turn out to be serious in larger-scale production, the methanol option is at least theoretically more economical than the ethanol one. However, more interest has centered on ethanol, partly because of recent problems in the sugar market and hence a temporarily low opportunity cost for the use of sugarcane to produce fuel alcohols. The large Brazilian PROALCOOL programme must be counted as a success since the country is well on its way towards making alcohol rather than gasoline the primary (non-diesel) motor fuel. However, the costs of achieving this 'success' have probably been very high, since a good deal of government intervention (subsidies, price-fixing and tax favouritism) has been necessary. Biogas from the bacterial fermentation of animal wastes has been successfully carried out in India, China and elsewhere. In other countries it has run into trouble, especially with maintenance problems. It is probably safer to view the biogas option as analogous to the use of the bagasse residue from
328
sugarcane - that is, as a useful bioenergy byproduct. For example, in livestock facilities such as pig farms, gas generation can be a byproduct operation that accomplishes a disposal problem as well as providing a cheap energy source and a useful fertilizer residue. The end uses that will be promising for future biomass consumption have mostly already been mentioned: direct combustion for process heat and for electricity generation in particular, and the generation of power by the use of gas from wood or wastes. A special end use of concern in many developing countries is operating irrigation pumps by using producer gas from wood or wastes as a replacement for diesel fuel. Finally, in the market for household cooking and heating fuels, charcoal especially may be a useful fuel that can hold its own and maybe even gain ground against wood and even more expensive fossil fuels like LPG or kerosene.
CONSTRAINTS ON DEVELOPMENT Bioenergy experiences all the usual kinds of problems that afflict most economic development projects. Capital is lacking, skilled labour is not available and, perhaps most important, management skills are often in short supply. Just as in projects in the agricultural sector, lack of transport or marketing facilities can be serious impediments to the distribution of wood or other biomass for fuel. As with agriculture, there can sometimes be 'too much of a good thing': it has been feared for the Gujarat project area in India that if the project is successful enough, it could eventually result in an over supply of wood and a collapse of local market prices for wood and wood products. There are, however, in addition to these general impediments to bioenergy development, some particular constraints that are unique to bioenergy. First, the planting of forests and especially the planting of fuel crops like sugarcane can be directly competitive with cultivation for food, feed or fibre. Obviously frequently voiced concerns about this 'food v s fuel' problem are grossly overdrawn. It has never been seriously proposed to do away with food crops to supply biofuels instead: both food and fuel are necessary parts of life and any sensible bioenergy programmes will have to be coordinated with other agricultural production - either through intervention by government planners or by market forces alone. Another special problem is caused by the mere existence of a large traditional sector using biomass. This sometimes can lead to planning uncertainty: for
ENERGY POLICY August 1985
Biomass energy in developing countries
example, it is not clear whether the goal should be the preservation of the natural forests that presently supply traditional fuel users or the creation of new forestry plantations. Of even more serious concern, decisions about bioenergy may be bureaucratically divided between Ministries of Energy, Agriculture and Forestry, with sometimes a sort of planning 'gridlock' resulting, which can prevent the successful implementation of biomass cultivation projects. Finally, the most serious impediment to the development of bioenergy (and other renewable fuels) is the uncertainty in the market for petroleum. Even with the recent decline in oil prices, many bioenergy projects still make sense. However, it is very difficult to plan for future investments in bioenergy when the future course of oil economics is so mystifying. However, given the foreign exchange crisis in many developing countries, bioenergy, even at somewhat high costs in local currency, may sometimes be justifiable if the importation of oil is thereby avoided.
CONCLUSION Bioenergy has to do with a double resource problem. It is necessary to deal with the traditional energy needs of the vast part of the world's population that lives on wood, charcoal and other primitive biomass fuels. At the same time it is important to keep in mind the expansion of biomass
E N E R G Y P O L I C Y August 1985
fuels in other sectors as a replacement for imported oil. Obviously both of these goals cannot be accomplished by merely mining the natural forests of the world or by replacing all food crops by sugarcane or corn to produce fuel alcohol. Nevertheless, the total potential biomass resource, despite the well known deforestation problem, is still relatively underutilized. With the expanded use of known techniques, much less with the newer results of genetic engineering, bioenergy technologies should become available which can contribute significantly to the replacement of imported oil on the foreign exchange ledgers of many developing countries. While integrated rural development schemes, for example, are often sound ideas, especially if they can be made attractive to private industry, bioenergy projects represent an especially attractive way of producing a mixture of co-products - including bioenergy in with fertilizers, foodstuffs and raw materials for such industries as plastic and wood products. 1Unless otherwise identified, the references for this paper will be found in William Ramsay, Bioenergy and Economic Development: Planning for Blomass Energy Programs in the Third World, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1985. 2See Appendix 2-B by Joy Dunkerley, 'Major uses of biomass fuels', in ibid. 3See Manzoor Alam, Joy Dunkerley, K.N. Gopi and William Ramsay with Elizabeth Davis, Fuelwood in Urban Markets: A Case Study of Hyderabad, Concept, New Delhi, 1985, p 81. 4Joy Dunkerley, William Ramsay, Lincoln Gordon and Elizabeth Cecelski, Energy Strategies for Developing Nations, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, for Resources for the Future, 1981, p 170. 51bid, pp 173-177.
329
Energy from biomass already forms an important part of the world economy, especially in the form of traditional fuels. The author explains how the resource base is very large even under present technologies and may be larger under better techniques of cultivation or through genetic engineering. Gasification of wood and the production of charcoal are two of the most promising bioenergy technologies, with the production of alcohol from sugarcane a stronger contender under present world sugar market conditions. There are particular constraints for all renewable fuels, including bioenergy such as uncertainty in oil prices - plus the special problems of competition with agriculture and confusion of planning authority. This paper examines the present role of biomass energy, the resource base for future development, some promising energy conversion technologies and uses and a few constraints on the development of bioenergy. Keywords: Biomass; Renewable energy; Economic development Bioenergy is one of the primary sources of fuel for millions of households now burning wood and charcoal, primarily for household cooking, t It is also an exceedingly promising alternative energy source for supplying modern sector needs in the developing countries. This alternative, however, involves a number of perplexing anomalies. The world is full of unused forest and grassland. Yet every day people are forced to curtail cooking because of shortages of fuelwood. Growing trees is one of the oldest of human arts but establishing viable plantations of trees for fuelwood has proved difficult in many countries. The potential of biomass as an easily stored form of solar energy is enormous however.
William Ramsay is with the National Academy of Engineering, 2101 Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC 20418.
326
PRESENT ROLE OF BIOMASS Biomass is the predominant fuel in the household sector in almost every developing country. 2 Its use is highly correlated with the degree of rural population, with biomass providing by far the largest share of household energy in countries with large rural areas. It accounts for over 90% of total household use in the poorer countries of Africa and Central America. This biomass fuel resource may be in the form of fuelwood or charcoal, crop waste or animal waste. Its most critical function is in cooking, with lighting being the other principal use. It is noteworthy that many other energy functions in rural households, such as refrigeration, fans and of course television sets and radios, cannot be supplied by traditional biomass fuel forms - with the minor exception of charcoal-heated irons. Although overall the major emphasis may seem to be rural, there is a large proportion of urban energy supplied by fuelwood and charcoal, even in very large cities. In a survey of the city of Hyderabad in India, for example, nearly 30% of the households sampled used wood for some or all of their cooking needs. 3 Furthermore, industrial use of fuelwood and charcoal is already important. Fuelwood or charcoal is already widely used in tobacco curing and brick making and in such commercial sector enterprises as restaurants. Furthermore, large agricultural operations such as sugar making and coffee processing often use biomass residues, while charcoal has had an important - but exceptional - use in the steel making industry in Brazil. The present pattern of use of biomass fuels has been conditioned of course by the prices and availabilities of alternative fuels. It is one of the ironies of the history of the past decade or so that many governments had by 1972 subsidized kerosene for rural use in order to discourage the use of biomass and hence discourage the process of deforestation. Over a decade later, many of the
0301-4215/85/040326-04503.00 © 1985 Butterworth & Co (Publishers) Ltd
Biomass energy in developing countries
same countries have seen themselves forced to reduce or remove these subsidies in order to cut down on their high bills for oil imports.
RESOURCE BASE FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT The theoretical resource base for supplying biomass energy is very large. The potential yield from forests in the developing world has been estimated in one study to fall within the range of 500 million to 5 billion metric tons of oil equivalent (mtoe) per year. 4 This estimate counts only presently forested areas, and the lower end of the estimate tries to take account of the fact that many areas classified as 'forest' actually have very little biomass. The existing resource base should also include not only trees but also crop and animal waste and probably underutilized natural grassland. The total for the grassland has not been estimated; the total amounts of waste have been estimated, under somewhat arbitrary assumptions, as about 800 mtoe. 5 For waste resources the problem is knowing which waste is actually 'waste'. Much waste is actually used as fuel in rural households - the use of animal waste in India being particularly well documented - but much crop waste material is also used for soil amendments or for building materials and is not really freely available as a bioenergy resource. The amount of biomass potentially available varies greatly between countries. Even on a continent-by-continent basis, Table 1 shows that Africa, for example, has a much greater potential than Asia. Considering only present stands of timber and amounts of waste is almost irrelevant. If natural forests were to be used in an expansion of bioenergy use, vast programmes of replanting would have to take place. In practice - mostly because of existing difficulties in understanding the ecology of tropical forests - the future of both trees and field crops, such as sugarcane grown for the production of fuel Table 1. Potential annual energy resources from existing forest and waste biomass in developing countries.
Latin America Africa Asia
Total potential annual energy from biomass (mtoe)
1976 commercial energy consumption (mtoe)
Ratio of
370-2000 280-1900 650-1700
218 43 251
1.7-9.2 6.5-44 2.6-618
1:2
Source: Dunkerley, Ramsay, Gordon and Cecelski, op cit, Ref 4.
ENERGY POLICY August 1985
alcohol, probably lies in the conversion of presently underutilized pasture lands or wastelands to tree plantations or in other specific plantings of biomass for energy. Many 'community woodlot programmes' have tried to follow this strategy by growing trees on local underutilized acreage, particularly in Africa but also in Asia and Latin America. While most such efforts have probably been failures or only marginal successes, there are some outstanding exceptions. In particular, in the Indian state of Gujarat, the Forestry Department has combined programmes of roadside plantings, village woodlots, plantations at schools and hospitals and tree growing by farmers, especially in conjunction with the growth of compatible field crops (agroforestry). The present row upon row of trees stretching along most of the primary and secondary road systems of Gujarat is an obvious testimonial to this programme. Probably more significant is the uncounted number of tons of fuelwood (and also poles for construction) produced by farmers using seedlings supplied by the Forest Department. The future should show more promise. Even the use of techniques already popular in the classical era, such as constructing simple earthen impoundments in the desert, could conceivably lead to establishing viable tree plantations in arid areas. Another intriguing possibility is that current research in genetic engineering may eventually make possible the development of plants with extremely large yields or, probably even more important, the creation of new varieties (or species) that can thrive in environments that are presently not conducive to cultivation.
PROMISING CONVERSION TECHNOLOGIES AND END USES In the first flush of enthusiasm for renewable energies, many different kinds of biomass technologies and new end uses were proposed. At this point, one can probably discern some 'shake-out' of the options - some appear now more viable in cost and scope than others. However, the following conclusions about technologies must be hedged somewhat because of ongoing research in various areas. Direct combustion of wood is of prime interest, because technically it appears to be such a well established and familiar process. Indeed, a large programme of electricity generation is now being carried out in the Philippines based on fuelwood from plantations of the fast-growing leucaena tree.
327
Biomass energy in developing countries
Nevertheless, there are always some problems in handling wood and present oil furnaces have to be retrofitted to use wood in the form of logs or chips. For this reason, it may be that gasification of wood represents the real wave of the future, despite the inevitable energy losses during conversion to gas. Interest in gasification may also imply an interest in charcoal, since charcoal is a better feedstock for producing gas than wood, especially when a pure product must be derived, such as that needed for internal combustion engines. Charcoal may in itself play a larger role in replacing wood or other fuels in household and other direct combustion uses. Energy is certainly lost in turning wood into charcoal but there seems to be a natural consumer preference for charcoal at the household level. This preference is mirrored by engineering advantages in handling and combustion for larger industrial or utility process heat applications. In general a combination of gas, oils and charcoal is produced when wood is heated under restricted conditions of temperature, pressure and oxygen supply (pyrolysis). Earlier enthusiasm for using the 'char oils' that can be produced during pyrolysis has subsided because of unfavorable corrosive characteristics of the fuel. The gasification process can also be used to produce wood alcohol or methanol by reassembling the molecules in the gas by means of a catalyst. Similarly, the fermentation of grains or sugars (a biochemical process using yeasts as a catalyst) can produce grain alcohol or ethanol. Both alcohols are acceptable motor fuels. Except for some toxicity problems, which however could turn out to be serious in larger-scale production, the methanol option is at least theoretically more economical than the ethanol one. However, more interest has centered on ethanol, partly because of recent problems in the sugar market and hence a temporarily low opportunity cost for the use of sugarcane to produce fuel alcohols. The large Brazilian PROALCOOL programme must be counted as a success since the country is well on its way towards making alcohol rather than gasoline the primary (non-diesel) motor fuel. However, the costs of achieving this 'success' have probably been very high, since a good deal of government intervention (subsidies, price-fixing and tax favouritism) has been necessary. Biogas from the bacterial fermentation of animal wastes has been successfully carried out in India, China and elsewhere. In other countries it has run into trouble, especially with maintenance problems. It is probably safer to view the biogas option as analogous to the use of the bagasse residue from
328
sugarcane - that is, as a useful bioenergy byproduct. For example, in livestock facilities such as pig farms, gas generation can be a byproduct operation that accomplishes a disposal problem as well as providing a cheap energy source and a useful fertilizer residue. The end uses that will be promising for future biomass consumption have mostly already been mentioned: direct combustion for process heat and for electricity generation in particular, and the generation of power by the use of gas from wood or wastes. A special end use of concern in many developing countries is operating irrigation pumps by using producer gas from wood or wastes as a replacement for diesel fuel. Finally, in the market for household cooking and heating fuels, charcoal especially may be a useful fuel that can hold its own and maybe even gain ground against wood and even more expensive fossil fuels like LPG or kerosene.
CONSTRAINTS ON DEVELOPMENT Bioenergy experiences all the usual kinds of problems that afflict most economic development projects. Capital is lacking, skilled labour is not available and, perhaps most important, management skills are often in short supply. Just as in projects in the agricultural sector, lack of transport or marketing facilities can be serious impediments to the distribution of wood or other biomass for fuel. As with agriculture, there can sometimes be 'too much of a good thing': it has been feared for the Gujarat project area in India that if the project is successful enough, it could eventually result in an over supply of wood and a collapse of local market prices for wood and wood products. There are, however, in addition to these general impediments to bioenergy development, some particular constraints that are unique to bioenergy. First, the planting of forests and especially the planting of fuel crops like sugarcane can be directly competitive with cultivation for food, feed or fibre. Obviously frequently voiced concerns about this 'food v s fuel' problem are grossly overdrawn. It has never been seriously proposed to do away with food crops to supply biofuels instead: both food and fuel are necessary parts of life and any sensible bioenergy programmes will have to be coordinated with other agricultural production - either through intervention by government planners or by market forces alone. Another special problem is caused by the mere existence of a large traditional sector using biomass. This sometimes can lead to planning uncertainty: for
ENERGY POLICY August 1985
Biomass energy in developing countries
example, it is not clear whether the goal should be the preservation of the natural forests that presently supply traditional fuel users or the creation of new forestry plantations. Of even more serious concern, decisions about bioenergy may be bureaucratically divided between Ministries of Energy, Agriculture and Forestry, with sometimes a sort of planning 'gridlock' resulting, which can prevent the successful implementation of biomass cultivation projects. Finally, the most serious impediment to the development of bioenergy (and other renewable fuels) is the uncertainty in the market for petroleum. Even with the recent decline in oil prices, many bioenergy projects still make sense. However, it is very difficult to plan for future investments in bioenergy when the future course of oil economics is so mystifying. However, given the foreign exchange crisis in many developing countries, bioenergy, even at somewhat high costs in local currency, may sometimes be justifiable if the importation of oil is thereby avoided.
CONCLUSION Bioenergy has to do with a double resource problem. It is necessary to deal with the traditional energy needs of the vast part of the world's population that lives on wood, charcoal and other primitive biomass fuels. At the same time it is important to keep in mind the expansion of biomass
E N E R G Y P O L I C Y August 1985
fuels in other sectors as a replacement for imported oil. Obviously both of these goals cannot be accomplished by merely mining the natural forests of the world or by replacing all food crops by sugarcane or corn to produce fuel alcohol. Nevertheless, the total potential biomass resource, despite the well known deforestation problem, is still relatively underutilized. With the expanded use of known techniques, much less with the newer results of genetic engineering, bioenergy technologies should become available which can contribute significantly to the replacement of imported oil on the foreign exchange ledgers of many developing countries. While integrated rural development schemes, for example, are often sound ideas, especially if they can be made attractive to private industry, bioenergy projects represent an especially attractive way of producing a mixture of co-products - including bioenergy in with fertilizers, foodstuffs and raw materials for such industries as plastic and wood products. 1Unless otherwise identified, the references for this paper will be found in William Ramsay, Bioenergy and Economic Development: Planning for Blomass Energy Programs in the Third World, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1985. 2See Appendix 2-B by Joy Dunkerley, 'Major uses of biomass fuels', in ibid. 3See Manzoor Alam, Joy Dunkerley, K.N. Gopi and William Ramsay with Elizabeth Davis, Fuelwood in Urban Markets: A Case Study of Hyderabad, Concept, New Delhi, 1985, p 81. 4Joy Dunkerley, William Ramsay, Lincoln Gordon and Elizabeth Cecelski, Energy Strategies for Developing Nations, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, for Resources for the Future, 1981, p 170. 51bid, pp 173-177.
329