A comparative study of small-scale rural energy service pathways for lighting, cooking and mechanical power

The strong international growth of biofuels in the last decade brought the interest in bioenergy back on the agenda. While many life cycle assessments for biofuels mainly focus on environmental impacts and costs, over the last decade especially the energy balance of biofuel production chains has been a major point of criticism. This study applies a specially adapted and LCA-based analytical framework for rural energy service pathways (RESPs) to compare the use of Jatropha plant oil and biogas with other small-scale RESPs for lighting, cooking and mechanical power. The aim is to analyse their technological feasibility and economical viability by comparing the energy and cost efficiency. Results show strong differences for the investigated plant oil production and processing pathways, while the comparison with a baseline and a competitive renewable energy scenario reveals a weak performance of plant oil and even biogas in the categories of lighting and cooking. The potential for mechanical power depends largely on the careful optimisation of the energy service pathway by balancing the capital, energy, labour, and transport intensity. For the present case, the village scale production of Jatropha plant oil and biogas and their simultaneous use in a dual fuel engine to locally provide power and electricity would be the service pathway with the highest potential in terms of energy and cost efficiency.