The re-emergence of charcoal use will also be a major contributor to climate change and environmental pollution.
Burning trees for charcoal is a huge distributor to deforestation. Research shows that deforestation has a dual impact on the climate.
Kenya envisions a newly industrialised middle-income economy with measures and policies to pursue low carbon and resilient development pathway by 2030. It is also one of the first countries to enact a comprehensive law and policy to guide climate action with commitment to abate greenhouse gases by 32 per cent by 2030 and clean energy development, energy efficiency and drought management among its priorities.
As of 2017, about 93 per cent of residential and commercial energy consumption in the country was fuelled by biomass sources, mainly charcoal and firewood. In February 2018, the government imposed a series of trade bans on the charcoal business and this accelerated the rapid growth of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) with demand nearly doubling to 217,800 tonnes. This can be attributed to the low prices for cooking gas after the National Treasury scrapped value added tax (VAT) on it to cut costs and reduce use of kerosene and charcoal.
