Abstract:
Biogas is environmentally sound and economically viable, clean, and renewable
energy source. Despite its numerous benefits and dissemination efforts, the adoption
of biogas technology has been low. The objective of this study was to assess factors
determining adoption of biogas technology as an alternative energy source at
household level in Holeta district, southern Ethiopia. A multistage sampling
technique was employed to select sample households. A total of 356 sample
households, 96 biogas technology adopters, and 260 non adopter households were
surveyed The collected data were analyzed by inferential statistics and econometric
model using SPSS version 20. Results from the logit model showed that education
level of household head, annual income level, livestock holding size, access to
technical support, and level of awareness have significant positive influence on
households’ decision to adopt biogas technology. The study aims to assessing the role
of biogas technology in saving biomass, mitigating green-house gases (GHG)
emissions, and maintaining environmental sustainability in Holata woreda. In
Ethiopia, majority of the rural population relies on biomass energy sources for day to
day cooking. This heavy dependency on biomass fuel has resulted in deforestation,
climate change, global warming, desertification and decrease in agricultural
productivity. Adoption of biogas technology has great potential to supply clean and
environment friendly energy source and results in reducing dependency on traditional
biomass. This study was conducted to assess factors that influence the adoption of
household biogas technology and its contribution on the greenhouse gas emission
reduction, and biomass forest conservation. To do so, household survey was
conducted on 356 households using sample random sampling design and logistic
regression model is used to analysis the data. The result of analysis indicated that
nine variables were statistically significant positively or negatively on the
household’s decision to adopt biogas technology. Variables such as number of cattle,
distance to firewood sources, availability of reliable water source and awareness on
biogas technology were have positive relation on biogas adoption with significance p
< 0.01. However, variables such as land size, credit facility, household income status
and technical service influence positively on decision to take biogas technology with
p < 0.001. Hence, non-adopter households emitted about 8,247.88kg 𝐶𝑂2e per year
per household whereas biogas adopter households emitted 3415.62 kg 𝐶𝑂2e per year
per households which resulted in 4.84 tons 𝐶𝑂2e (58.69% reduction) by adopter
households. Domestic biogas technology has also contributed on biomass forest
conservation with annual woody biomass reduction of 51.5% by adopter households
