Chippenham based Good Energy employee helps invent cow-poo generator in Tanzania

A clean energy specialist from renewable energy company Good Energy used his spare time to design a biogenerator for the UK charity Wild Survivors. Rory Fox-Evans, created the invention powered by abundant fuel sources in remote areas of Northern Tanzania. The biogenerator, which is fuelled with cow manure, green waste and food waste, will help local people access clean energy while reducing deforestation and protecting elephant populations.

Communities within the Northern Tanzanian region currently depend on firewood for cooking and heating, posing a significant threat to the local elephant population. The illegal timber trade, demand for firewood, and agricultural expansion are fragmenting habitat with a third of ecosystems and 38% of forest cover lost in the last 30 years. The biogenerator is designed to use natural waste, rather than the deforested trees, to produce fuel fit for cooking.

With conservation projects based in Northern Tanzania, Wild Survivor’s mission is to prevent human-elephant conflict by delivering sustainable initiatives that place community welfare at the heart of wildlife conservation. With a focus on conflict hotspots, they establish community-led coexistence projects in beehive fences, alternative livelihoods, and forest protection, combined with innovative wildlife technology.

Rory graduated from the University of Plymouth with a degree in Microbiology, but found it challenging to design a biogenerator, on a limited budget.

He said: “It took a lot of tweaking to work out how much space we would need, how we would keep the bacteria warm enough to produce the gas, and what we would use for the fuel. Eventually, I came up with a design that we could produce from easy-to-find components that would use a mixture of cow manure and the village’s food