Dr Selemani Jafo, the Union and Environment state minister in the Vice President’s Office (VPO) made this affirmation at a press briefing in the capital yesterday, making comparisons across six ministries.
Institutions under the ministry have dropped fuel wood by up to 85 percent in the VPO update on the picture up to the end of January.
It said 30 out of 35 teacher training colleges had made the shift, 51 out of 54 folk development colleges, and eight centres run by the Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA) out of 36 equal such institutions.
The shift to cleaner energy was taken up with a softer version of firewood where tree felling for charcoal is eliminated, and there is ‘alternative wood’ chiefly in the form of briquettes.
An online entry describes briquettes as flammable blocks of matter used as fuel. They are made from extruded or compressed shredded combustible materials like charcoal fines, mineral char, sawdust, chaff from rice, peanut and other crops along with peat (decomposed plants), in particular.
The minister described the clean energy shift in terms of alternative wood, considered to be a gentler version vis a vis the environment, but online explanation focuses more on the cook stove for the material than the material itself.
The stoves and the relevant materials are less smoky and burn far less quantities of wood or wooden materials, and can be used in schools, camps or restaurants.
It is so far not clear how much of briquettes is being conducted and its commercial parameters, for instance in the use of a binding agent like starch to hold the materials together, though pressure may at times be enough.
Less than a quarter of VETA centres had taken up alternative wood, or 22.22 percent, with the figure being even less for schools, where out of 571 boarding secondary schools just 67 schools or 11.73 percent had decamped to alternative wood.
There was also a scatter of other institutions shifting to alternative wood, where the minister cited Kidatu Police College and Tanzania Police School as using gas stoves, while the Zanzibar Police College uses gas and wood.
Out of 129 prisons, 76 had shifted to natural gas mainly, along with three out of four prison colleges and a secondary school at Bwawani (Coast Region) had changed energy use.
Tengeru and Uyole community development colleges have started using renewable energy, making it 25 percent of institutions under that category.
The Mwananyamala regional referral hospital in Dar es Salaam and similar facility in Dodoma, plus Sinza Health Center in the city had shifted to natural gas.
In 2022, the government ordered all institutions that serve not less than 100 people to stop using firewood and charcoal by January 31, 2024, while institutions serving 200 people have until January 31, 2025 to make the shift.
The National Environmental Policy of 2021 encourages the use of alternative energy to wood and charcoal to reduce deforestation.
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