A Sustainable and Environment Friendly Energy Source for Rukungiri District

ABSTRACT In Uganda, development is largely pulled back by lack of reliable, sustainable and environment friendly energy. The thesis entitled “A sustainable and environment friendly energy source for Rukungiri District “is presented as a result of the research carried out in Rukungiri District based on the problem of energy crisis and based the three specific objectives, namely: to Identify the sources of energy currently available to the people of Rukungiri District, to determine the costs of energy sources available to the people of Rukungiri, and to Identify the advantages and disadvantages of the identified sources of energy available in the district. The study adopted a descriptive research design by collecting detailed information energy users,and households randomly as well as selection method for example Solar home users and those connected to the national grid. The study selected a total population of 200 households to be interviewed and questionnaire distributed to them. Using the simple random sampling procedure, the researcher came out with the sample size of 133 house hold respondents. The study employed observation and structured questionnaire approach to get primary data, as well as existing information as secondary data. The data collected was presented in tables. The findings showed that all the house hold use firewood as their source of energy and very small percent connected to the national grid.55 percent of the correspondents use Solar energy as a supplement to other sources of energy used by the households. It was recommended that the government needs to do more to extend power to the rural Rukungiri and encourage a forestation. Facilitation need to be extended from the government and other NGO to the people of Rukungiri district so that Solar energy can be increasingly used since there is no monthly bills and is renewable. The study recommends mall interest loans to be extended to them.