FIGURE 12. UNDP achievements in improving access to electricity and clean cooking fuels and the impact pathway for households, services and income-generating activities (IGA) People: 608,315
Electricity access: 38,058
Households
Clean cooking: 83,605
IGA: 2,452 Electricity
Over 6 million Services: 2,247
At least 1 million
IGA: 278 Clean Cooking
Beneficiaries services
IGA: 2,730
Beneficiaries IGA
Source: IEO compilation, 2021
UNDP bioenergy projects have faced major challenges in reaching their targets. Most biomass projects did not reach the quantitative targets and their sustainability remains an issue even when quantitative targets have been exceeded during the project lifetime. The design and implementation of bioenergy is particularly challenging because of the complexity of the biomass value chain and the logistics. A biogas survey carried out in Egypt shows that less than 15 percent of the biogas units were still working. This is due to problems in the enabling environment rather than the technology, which is mature.82 There is only one project focused on biofuels (jatropha oil) as a substitute for diesel in small-scale electricity generation and as a clean cooking fuel. The project design stated that jatropha oil is seen by the public as a high-quality national energy resource and an affordable and feasible alternative to oil products or diesel. This project includes development and dissemination of 300 improved stoves. However, the project faced major constraints and was eventually restructured without reaching the key outcomes.83 This was due to issues in the project design and the quality of baseline information, which overlooked technical, economic and financial dimensions of the promotion of biofuels. Some projects currently under implementation target a significant number of households, services and beneficiaries of income-generation activities; Nigeria, South Africa and Ethiopia are prominent examples. These projects are expected to improve electricity and clean cooking access for several hundred thousand households and several million individual beneficiaries. It is reasonable to expect that these projects will reach or come close to their quantitative targets, as a review of their project designs shows a greater focus
82
83
Lida Ioannou-Ttofa, Spyros Foteinis, Amira Seifelnasr Moustafa, Essam Abdelsalam, Mohamed Samer, Despo Fatta-Kassinos, Life cycle assessment of household biogas production in Egypt: Influence of digester volume, biogas leakages, and digestate valorization as biofertilizer, Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 286, 2021, 125468, ISSN 0959-6526, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jclepro.2020.125468. Major factors hindering the deployment of jatropha oil particularly the economics of the whole value chain (low yields in marginal lands) were not sufficiently considered. Although a jatropha oil stove was designed, no stoves were produced.
Chapter 4. FINDINGS
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