Energy production

Charcoal is widely used for cooking and heating in developing countries. The consumption of charcoal has been at high level and the demand may keep growing over the next decades, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The overall objective of the publication is to provide data and information to allow for informed decision-making on the contribution sustainable charcoal production and consumption can make to climate change mitigation.

The concept of Integrated Food and Energy Systems (IFES) as such is not new. Simple integration of food and energy production at both small and large scales has shown many successful results. However, with the increasing complexity of the system, - and hence higher resource use efficiency, the number of successful cases diminishes. Concrete results on wide-scale implementation of more complex IFES are scarce.