**1. Introduction**

The United Republic of Tanzania (URT) is the largest country in East Africa in terms of size and population. It is made up by Tanzania Mainland and the island of Zanzibar. It is bor‐ dered by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi in the west; Zambia, Ma‐ lawi and Mozambique in the Southern part, Uganda and Kenya in the Northern side and the Indian Ocean on the East. The country lies between meridians 300 E and 400 E and parallels 10 S and 120 S.

It has an area of 945,000 Square Kilometres.While about 62,000 square Kilometres of the land is covered by water, including three fresh trans-boundary lakes of Victoria, Tanganyika and Nyasa. Woodlands accounts for 33,500 square Kilometres [1] and arable land suitable for ag‐ riculture is concentrated in central part and Southern Highlands of the country, covering about 44 million hectares.

According to URT, Economic survey report 2009 [2], the Tanzanian population was estimat‐ ed to be 41,915,799 of which 21,311,150, that is about 50.8 percent, were female, while 20,604,730 about 49.2 percent were male. Tanzania mainland had an estimated population of 40,683,294, while Zanzibar had an estimated population of 1,232,505. The population distri‐ bution indicated that 31,143,439 of people, about 74.3 percent live in rural areas, while 10, 772, 360 people about 25.7 percent live in urban areas. These estimates are based on the pop‐ ulation growth rate of 2.9 percent per annum established out of the Population and Housing Census of the years 2002. [3]

Hydropower, Coal and Petroleum are Tanzania's main source of commercial energy. How‐ ever, solid biomass energy such as agro residue, forestry residue and wood fuels are used throughout the country and they account for 88 percent of total energy consumption in rural and semi-urban areas [4] while modern commercial energy contribute about 2 percent. Of

© 2013 Kusekwa; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 Kusekwa; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

the 24 mainland regions, Dar es Salaam region has the greatest access to electricity; however, less than 50 percent of all households in the regions are connected.

Out of Tanzania's 41.9 million inhabitants, so far only 14 percent of urban and 2 percent of rural areas are electrified [5], which means that less than 12 percent have access to gridbased electricity or other forms of commercial electricity. The national electricity connectivi‐ ty is about 14%; though, it is expected that electricity demand will triple by 2020[8]. On the supply side, TANESCO increased connections by almost 66,000 in 2010 bringing the total number of its customers to 868,953 by the end of 2010. REA currently (2011) implements grid extension projects initially benefitting 20,000 new customers [9]. In the current setting

Biomass Conversion to Energy in Tanzania: A Critique

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Moreover, Tanzania's electricity sector faces another important challenge since it is heavily dependent on hydropower, which means that energy provision cannot be ascertained in times of drought. This was clearly visible in the years 2010/2011, where re-curing droughts effectively removed around 420 MW from a system of around 900 MW, forcing the country to endure a programme of load shedding coupled with unplanned outages. With conse‐ quently suppressed sales the countries' utility TANESCO financial situation became increas‐ ingly parlous (on top of economic losses for non-productivity to the country as a whole).

This led to the design of an 572 MW Emergency Power Plan at the end of 2011, to be fully fuelled by liquid fossil fuels (HFO, JetA1, diesel) at (fuel) costs varying from 30-43 ct/ kWhThese are to be financed by TANESCO tariff revenues and through government guar‐ anteed loans, leading to an increasing weaker financial position of TANESCO. There is quite some critique on the EPP because it does not take into account planned natural gas supply projects, dispersed capacity owned by the private sector, and power projects to be commis‐ sioned already in the short and medium term. In general there is a disconnect between ex‐ pected power demand (both unconstrained -1089 MW- and constrained) and the total

It is estimated that 32 GWh per year [10] is generated from smaller systems, many of which are private schemes run by religious missionaries. The potential for micro/mini-hydro is large [4]; however, exploitation is still low because of barriers hindering full exploitation of

Tanzania has so far made five onshore and shallow water discoveries of natural gas fields in the vicinity of SongoSongo Island, Mnazi bay, Mkuranga, Kiliwani North and Nyuni. Out of the five discoveries, only two gas fields, SongoSongo and Mnazi bay are producing. Mkur‐ anga and Nyuni gas fields have not been assessed. It is estimated that about 27 trillion [11] cubic feet gas is available in the country. Natural gas is expected to become a reliable and

economical source of energy to replace petroleum in the near future.

demand will therefore even more outpace supply.

generation capacity (1855 MW) proposed by the EPP.[9]

**2.2. Micro/Mini-hydro**

these potentials.

**2.3. Natural Gas**

The conventional energy sector, and in particular the electricity sector has not lived up to expectations of the Tanzanians. The sector is mainly characterized, among other problems, by unreliability power supply, low access levels at about 15% [5] low capacity utilization and availability factor; deficient maintenance of generation transmission facilities and equip‐ ment; poor procurement of spare parts due to liquidity problems; and high transmission and distribution losses at 20% [6] are typical problems.

Provision of electricity is largely confined to urban middle and upper income groups as well as the formal commercial and industrial sub-sector. At the moment the energy sector is char‐ acterized by large and increasing import of liquid petroleum products, which account for significant proportions of export earnings. Liquid petroleum is used in electricity generation and in the transport sector. The transport sector is the major consumer of liquid petroleum product accounting to about 60% of total consumption. The high liquid petroleum products import bill expose the country's energy sector to the external energy price shocks. Renewa‐ ble energy such as ethanol would assist in mitigating the negative impact of high liquid pe‐ troleum fuel imports

Tanzania is endowed with substantial renewable energy resources [4]. The renewable re‐ source potential in the country has not been fully exploited, but only to limited investment level;. Rural Energy Agency (REA) is making initiatives to disseminate information as the importance of renewable energy in the energy balance of the country. In addition, technical and financial barriers have contributed to the low levels of uptake of Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) in the country. However, these constrains are being addressed by REA.
