Grass Charcoal: Millar Institute for Transdisciplinary and development studies organizes dialogue conference

Millar Institute for Transdisciplinary and Development Studies, a well-known research institution operating in the Upper East Region has organized a dialogue conference that brought together a working group of renewable energy practitioners and policy actors to share information and make inputs into the ongoing organic briquettes production policy alternatives to regulate wood fuels in Ghana.

Grass converted into charcoal

Grass converted into charcoal

Participants at the dialogue conference

Participants at the dialogue conference
The conference saw partners actively participate by asking interesting questions on the way forward, especially with the new grass-to-charcoal innovation which has come as a remedy to eliminate bushfire burning and even felling of economic trees such as shea nuts trees for the production of wood charcoal in the northern part of Ghana.

Dr. Maxwell Ba-an Tengolzor demonstrating to participants how grass is done

Dr. Maxwell Ba-an Tengolzor explaining further about the grass charcoal preparation.

Meanwhile, addressing participants at the dialogue conference on Friday, November 25, 2022, at the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo Conference Hall, Millar Institute for Transdisciplinary and Development Student (MITDS) Prof. David Millar, the originator of the grass charcoal and grass brown paper innovation said, "at this level, there are two major areas and one is to have a business offtake to a business enterprise, a business man or business entrepreneur who would pick it and upscale it and aside that, the impact will be bigger than what we have done so far. So, that business component is yet to come on board”.

Prof. David Millar- President of Millar Institute for Transdisciplinary and Development Studies

“The second one is the policy because there has to be some policy alternative to support this initiative,” he stated.

Charcoal preparation

Charcoal preparation

Prof. Millar has done an extensive study on the use of organic material to make breakers. "We couldn’t find a single experience on the use of grass in making breakers within the subregion and not in Africa. So that’s something very unique and we think that if we want to upscale its uniqueness we need the policy support for that," Prof. Millar stressed

However, the Forest and Farm Producer Organizations (FFPO’s) trained by the Millar Institute on organic briquettes production technology also participated in the dialogue conference as they share their experiences and lessons learned.