Environmental benefits of valorising cattle manure for household cooking energy in Uganda

This study employed the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to evaluate the environmental impacts of utilizing cattle manure as a substrate for biogas generation for cooking energy in Uganda. Results of the study showed that biogas energy systems based of cattle manure has potential environmental benefits in comparison to charcoal produced from natural forests. Under baseline scenario, without recycling of slurry as fertilizer, the biogas system leads to total environmental impacts of over 80% less than that of charcoal system. When slurry is utilized as substitute mineral fertilizers, the environmental impact of biogas system was found to be less than that of charcoal by close to 95%. The study further showed that that use of biogas could lead to considerable reduction on human health impacts compared to charcoal. In conclusion, utilization of cattle manure for biogas production has potential benefit of reducing the environmental impacts due to charcoal production and use in Uganda.