We should seriously consider going electrical

A lecturer colleague of mine told me that he went to queue for fuel at a filling station in Kameza last Sunday. He arrived at 10 am, but was not served until 3 am the following day. A considerable portion of those 17 hours was spent waiting for the fuel tanker to arrive.

His experience is, but a glimpse of what Malawians are enduring. I refueled my own vehicle on Tuesday night, but not without going through unprecedented hassles. Gaining access to fuel requires not only determination, but also considerable stamina.

Petroleum has become something of a scarce commodity worldwide in recent months. In Malawi, however, the problem has been compounded by an acute shortage of foreign exchange. This year’s dismal performance by tobacco, the country’s principal foreign-exchange earner, has done little to ease the situation.

Yet had Malawi made certain choices in the past, the present crisis might not have become quite so severe. Sadly, we have missed opportunities on several fronts.

The first was the blending of petrol with locally produced ethanol. When the scheme was introduced, all imported petrol was supposed to be blended with ethanol in a ratio of 20:80—ethanol to petrol. Filling stations were required to take the blended fuel. This reduced by 20 percent the volume of petrol Malawi needed to import.

Somewhere along the way, however, the arrangement was abandoned. The petrol motorists now buy at Malawian filling stations is unblended. Consequently, we have to find foreign exchange for 100 percent of the petrol we consume, when the same quantity of fuel could have required only 80 percent of the forex used had blending continued.

There was another opportunity. In the early 2000s, Lilongwe Technical College embarked on a fully fledged project to test a vehicle running on 100 percent alcohol under different conditions. The vehicle was driven to various parts of the country and the exercise established that running a vehicle entirely on ethanol was viable. All that was required was the installation of one or two small devices on an existing petrol engine to make it compatible with ethanol.

Ethanol producers were preparing for large-scale production. I was reliably informed that they even developed a pricing structure for the commodity and presented it to government. No response came. The idea was stillborn.

What was never undertaken was a comparable investigation into biodiesel for diesel-powered vehicles. Biodiesel can be produced relatively easily from vegetable oil and anhydrous alcohol. The alcohol would typically be methanol, although anhydrous ethanol can also be used. Potassium hydroxide can catalyse the reaction, producing an ester that can effectively fuel a diesel engine.

Both ethanol and biodiesel have one particularly attractive quality for Malawi: they can be produced locally and need not consume precious foreign exchange. Had we seriously pursued biofuels, the benefits would have extended beyond forex savings. We could have created a vigorous local economy around growing the crops required for fuel production, manufacturing the fuels and distributing them. Many people could have found opportunities somewhere along that supply chain.

Brazil provides a compelling example. It has developed a substantial biofuel economy, with many vehicles running on ethanol or biodiesel. There is little reason why Malawi could not have pursued a similar path, adapted to its own circumstances.

Having missed the opportunities presented by petrol-ethanol blending and biofuels, we should be extremely careful not to miss the next one—the electric vehicle.

The world is steadily moving towards electric mobility. In Malawi, however, electric vehicles remain something of a pipe dream for most people, largely because of doubts about whether our electricity supply can reliably support them. The concern is understandable. Our electricity system is already struggling to meet existing demand, so what would happen if thousands of motorists began plugging their vehicles into the national grid?

There is some merit in that argument, but it does not tell the whole story. Elsewhere, solar-powered charging stations are already in operation. Photovoltaic panels generate electricity, while battery storage allows charging to continue after sunset or during cloudy weather.

Malawi’s filling stations should therefore not sit and wait for the electric-vehicle revolution to arrive. They should be planning for it now, installing mains-powered or solar-powered charging units and positioning themselves for the inevitable growth in electric mobility.

We have already missed opportunities to reduce our dependence on imported fuel. We should not allow the present crisis to become another missed opportunity. The way out may not lie simply in finding more foreign exchange to buy more petrol and diesel. It may lie in gradually making ourselves less dependent on them for the future.

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