Increasingly and on sustainable basis, biogas technology is becoming the future and pathway to modern, efficient and healthy living in many Nigerian homes, a real estate consultant has said.
The realtor, Olufemi Shield, who is the managing director of Afrihood Development Company, told journalists in Lagos at the weekend that, besides homes, biogas technology is also a major solution to many environmental challenges in Nigeria.
According to him, this technology is the key to healthy living; it neither pollutes the air and water nor tampers with the ecosystem because greenhouse gases are not emitted in its creation process. He maintained that biogas eradicates environmental hazards and increases the lifespan or expectancy of an average Nigerian.
“Biogas sewage system has the benefit of reducing soil and water pollution as opposed to the traditional use of soak-away and septic tanks whose hazardous waste often finds its way back to drinking sources.
If biogas technology is embraced by all and sundry, you will see that there will be a drastic decline in the spread of diseases like cholera and other air and water-borne ailments,” the realtor assured.
The technology, he added, has the added benefit of transforming organic materials into renewable energy that can be utilized for electricity and as an alternative to cooking gas. “Anything your fuel can do, biogas can do,” he said.
Shield explained further that biogas technology has the capacity to help governments to reduce reliance on non-renewable sources, leading to energy security and environmental benefits. He added that individuals, who adopt the use of biogas for cooking, heating, or electricity generation, lower their dependence on traditional energy sources, potentially reducing utility bills.
“There is need for enlightened Nigerians to sensitize their neighbours who are yet to embrace biogas technology; if a homeowner has adopted it and his neighbour has not, such a homeowner is still susceptible to environmental hazards,” he noted.
Read also: A look at Nigeria’s transition to a clean energy economy
As a source of energy, biogas is a non-hazardous creation of methane through the decomposition of organic matter like agricultural waste, food scraps, manure, and sewage in an anaerobic digester.
The creation of methane has, for a long time, been achieved through the burning of fossil fuel, which causes air and water pollution and also contributes to the build-up of the greenhouse effect that causes global warming and makes the ecosystem unhealthy.
“When fossil fuel is burnt, greenhouse gases are produced, trapping heat in the atmosphere, which warms the earth’s surface and causes extreme weather events. Continuous greenhouse gas emissions would result in the creation of new carbon compounds from hydrocarbons, which would be released into the atmosphere. This is ultimately hazardous to the ecosystem,” Shield explained.
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