This archive report was first published on 4 October 2021.
Published on October 4, 2021, a report by Reuters highlighted the growing trend of using biofuels in Kenya's capital, Nairobi.
Restaurant owner Miriam Kamau is among the 200,000 customers of Koko, a three-year-old Kenyan company that has replaced traditional fuels with locally-produced ethanol.
"We were among the first to use it," Kamau told Reuters. "It has helped very much. Right now I don't even know how much cooking gas costs."
Koko's biofuel, made from sugar cane byproducts, sells for 77.83 Kenya shillings ($0.70) per liter, significantly cheaper than kerosene and gas.
The company distributes its fuel using dispensers around Nairobi that allow customers to buy any amount of fuel using mobile money services.
According to the World Health Organization, around 900 million people in Africa use dirty fuel for cooking, contributing to air pollution that causes an estimated 500,000 premature deaths on the continent each year.
"Biofuels can be both economical and environmentally friendly," said Mario Loyola, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
However, big government subsidies in the United States and Europe have distorted energy markets and led to sweeping changes in land use patterns with environmentally devastating consequences, Loyola added.
Michael Wakoli, head of fuel operations at Koko, said their locally produced bioethanol was molasses-based, a waste by-product from the sugar refining process.
"I am using the waste of the product that is used to make sugar and molasses and so on, to create something that can be utilised again," he said.
Kenya has given ethanol producers using sugar processing waste an exemption from its 16% Value Added Tax to encourage ethanol production to grow in tandem with the sugar industry.
Koko plans to expand to 10 other Kenyan towns in the near future, Wakoli said.
