With a relatively small surface area, but a large and growing population (currently 19 million and 42.8 million by 2050) that is heavily dependent on wood fuel, Malawi is increasingly subject to energy stress. Over 94.3% of the country’s total demand for energy is met with firewood and charcoal. The latter is produced mainly from live trees in an unsustainable manner. The increasing population growth is therefore exerting significant pressure on the country’s forest resources, leading to forest degradation and a deforestation rate of 2.6% per year. Firewood is mainly used in open, three-stone fireplaces, even in urban areas. This is very inefficient and wastes precious forest resources. Moreover, open fires and smoke are a health risk, mainly for women and children. Women and children can walk up to 12km a day and spend 8 hours on collecting wood and preparing food. This means a loss of productive time, which could be better spent on income generation, education or other activities, and puts women and children at risk when they need to leave the safety of their communities to search for wood and other fuels
Despite the proven fact that biogas is the most promising technology to help Malawians with clean energy for cooking and lighting, the following are the reasons that has led to low adoption and accessibility of biomass energy:
- conventional brick biogas systems (which are the current available biogas systems in Malawi) and labor-intense production as well as quality control are only ideal for institutions and they need much technical expertise for maintenance. These systems are very expensive and not ideal for rural household level and for people with very low-income status.
- Families are also not educated about the better alternatives out there. They have no way to access them, and no idea how these alternatives could be used to improve their lives.
EcoGen’s Solution
EcoGen produce, sell and distribute low cost portable domestic biogas digester that is ideal for both rural and urban households. Basically these are waste bins that converts organic waste to clean energy (biogas)and organic fertiliser. This process is carried out using small and medium decentralized fermentation units for local processing of available organic waste (agricultural waste, household waste, etc.) into biogas.Organic waste is processed and marketed as fertilizer to distributors and cooperatives in Malawi.
Our product is more efficient (it produces a lot of biogas from few wastes, 3kgs of wastes=2 to 3 hours of cooking on gas. It also helps the client to Increase in food yield through the use of digestate (manure produced after production of biogas) and reduce food loss due to proper utilisation of food waste. Additionally, the product does not need digging, it is portable and can be moved and/or on-sold by household as an asset. Easy installation and maintenance (it takes half a day for installation and training), the average household net income increase of $450 per year, Provide clean and health environment as well as 3 tons of carbon abated per unit per year.
Our Mission
Our mission is to provide innovative and sustainable energy solutions through the production of production of biogas energy and organic fertilizer to households and institutions.
Products and Services
- Production, distribution and selling of Small Portable domestic bio digesters (1m3 to 5m3 volume) and Medium domestic digesters (for institutional use, e.g. schools, restaurants, hospitals, prisons etc.)
- Selling of biogas appliances
- Installation and operation of decentralized biogas systems
- Packaging and distribution of organic fertilizer
- Waste management consultancy
- Training on construction of portable digesters and organic waste recycling and sustainable agriculture (mainly on indigenous chickens)
- Advocating for the use of clean energy, environmental conservation, climate change and permaculture (sustainable agriculture)
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