Abstract
In Ethiopia, majority of the rural population relies on biomass energy sources for day to day cooking. This heavy dependency on biomass fuel has resulted in deforestation, climate change, global warming, desertification and decrease in agricultural productivity. Adoption of biogas technology has great potential to supply clean and environment friendly energy source and results in reducing dependency on traditional biomass.
This study was conducted to assess factors that influence the adoption of household biogas technology and its contribution on the greenhouse gas emission reduction, and biomass forest conservation. To do so, household survey was conducted on 356 households using simple sample random sampling design and logistic regression model is used to analysis the data. The result of analysis indicated that nine variables were statistically significant positively or negatively on the household’s decision to adopt biogas technology. Variables such as number of cattle, distance to firewood sources, availability of reliable water source and awareness on biogas technology were have positive relation on biogas adoption with significance p < 0.01. However, variables such as land size, credit facility, household income status and technical service influence positively on decision to take biogas technology with p <0.05. Regarding biomass energy consumption, independent samples test results indicate that there is a significant mean difference in all bio-fuel energy consumption between adopter and non-adopter at p < 0.001. Hence, non-adopter households emitted about 8,247.88kg CO2e per year per household whereas biogas adopter households emitted 3415.62 kg CO2e per year per households which resulted in 4.84 tons CO2e (58.69% reduction) by adopter households. Domestic biogas technology has also contributed on biomass forest conservation with annual woody biomass reduction of 51.5% by adopter households.
Keywords: Biogas technology adoption, Biomass energy, Greenhouse gas emission reduction, Forest conservation.
