Ethanol as a household fuel in Madagascar
Practical Action
A set of scenarios were developed to test a financial model for a 120 litre per day capacity micro-
distillery, based on currently operating plants in Brazil and USA, and using feedstock costs for
both molasses and waste products from fruit and vegetables. A range of prices for ethanol were
calculated, based on whether only ethanol was sold, or the more likely option, where ethanol and
a set of valuable by-products were sold.
For most of these analyses, the price of feedstock was taken as US$15/tonne for raw sugar cane
or US$4/tonne for agricultural waste, based on estimates from other countries such as Ethiopia
and quoted FAO values. However, since the price of ethanol, and thus the adoption rate of
ethanol as a household fuel, is highly dependent on the price of the raw feedstocks, a range of
prices (from $4 per tonne to $100 per tonne) was considered, for 330 days per annum
production of ethanol in all cases.
Price of feedstock (US$ per tonne)> 4
15 25 50 100
Price of ethanol US$/litre
0.19
0.33
0.48
0.73
With sale of
by-products
Annual household cost (US$)
Urban adoption (%)
74 125 180 271
61 31 15 4
Rural adoption (%)
13 9 6 3
Price of ethanol US$/litre
0.40
0.55
0.70
0.94
Without sale of Annual household cost
by-products
Urban adoption (%)
151 206 261 348
22 10 5
2
Rural adoption (%)
8531
Table 5: Expected impact of feedstock price on ethanol production cost and household adoption.
0.86
319
2
2
1/07
396
1
0
As Table 5 indicates, at a feedstock price of US$15 for sugarcane, with the sale of by-products,
ethanol could be produced in micro-distilleries at approximately 35 US cents per litre. At this
price, some 31% of urban households and 9% of rural households might be expected to adopt
200000 ethanol as a household fuel.
000000
Adoption of a new fuel on this scale would take some time; with a price of 35
and a 30-year period, it was estimated that availability of ethanol in the price
US cents per
range of 20 -
litre
35
US cents per litre could lead to its adoption as a fuel by 1.3 million to 2.6 million Malagasy
800000 households, requiring the eventual production of 485 million - 970 million litres of ethanol
annually. This resulted in estimates based on the following assumed rates of adaptation:
600000
400000
1200000
1000000
Urban HH
Rural HH
200000
800000
600000
0
400000
2010 2020
200000
0
2010
2030
Year
2040
2050
2020 2030 2040 2050
Urban HH
Rural HH
Year
Figure 12: Assumed adoption rate of ethanol as a household fuel over 30-year period.
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