Optimising biogas in Humanitarian Settings: Learnings from Malakal Protection of Civilians site, South Sudan

The vast majority of the 122.6 million forcibly displaced people in humanitarian settings do not have access to modern, reliable, and sustainable energy systems and services. This is especially the case for internally displaced people in Malakal Protection of Civilians (PoC) site, South Sudan, who face significant challenges accessing clean cooking technologies, often resorting to unsustainable sources of firewood for their cooking and lighting needs – which leads to significant health, financial, and climate challenges. The anaerobic digestion of human and food waste can simultaneously produce gas for cooking, a liquid fertiliser for agriculture, and safely treat human waste - all multi-dimensional critical needs in Malakal PoC site. This paper documents and explores best-practices for optimizing human waste-fed anaerobic digestion systems in humanitarian settings with a specific focus on Malakal PoC site. Our novelty is in the focus on biogas optimisation practices within humanitarian settings and the concurrent evolution of these practices through smart metering. Our methodology documents existing manual optimization processes and explores four pathways that are enabled by technological advances to evolve existing manual optimization processes, increasing the replicability and scalability of biogas programs in humanitarian settings. The four critical pathways are: 1) the localisation of expertise through ‘Internet of Things’ enabled monitoring, 2) leveraging co-benefits of carbon and beyond, 3) a move to commercial models for biogas implementation, and 4) unlocking biogas for social cohesion.