Rising demand for energy is one of the major challenges facing the world today and charcoal is a
principal fuel in Kenya. Faced with energy poverty many poor households turn to briquette making. This
study assessed the additional cooking fuel obtained from recycling charcoal dust into charcoal briquettes.
It applied Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the global warming potential (GWP) from use of charcoal
and production of briquettes from charcoal dust and cooking a traditional meal for a standard household
of five people. Native vegetation of Acacia drepanolobium and a low efficiency kiln were considered the
common practice, while an Acacia mearnsii plantation and a high efficiency kiln was used as an alternative
scenario. Charcoal and kerosene were considered as reference fuels. Recovering charcoal dust for
charcoal briquettes supplied an additional 16% cooking fuel. Wood carbonization and cooking caused the
highest GWP, so there is a need for technologies to improve the efficiency at these two stages of charcoal
briquettes and charcoal supply chain. Supplying energy and cooking a traditional meal in a combined
system using charcoal and recovering charcoal dust for charcoal briquettes and charcoal alone accounted
for 5.3e4.12 and 6.4e4.94 kg CO2 eq. per meal, respectively, assuming trees were not replanted. These
amounts declined three times when the carbon dioxide from the carbonization and cooking stages was
assumed to be taken up by growing biomass. This requires replanting of trees cut down for charcoal if the
neutral impact of biomass energy on GWP is to be maintained.
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND