Evaluation of Biomass Energy Potential Sites in a Section of Nigeria Using Geospatial Technology.

The continued quest to improve power supply in Nigeria has motivated the country to look for alternative energy resources to augment existing ones. The study area being in the tropical rainforest zone, is well positioned to harness biomass energy to improve its energy poverty status. Although, a number of biomass energy projects have been initiated in the arid parts of the country, very little has been done in the humid Eastern part of the country. Hence, this study aims to evaluate the biomass energy generation potential in part of South-east and South-south Nigeria, using geospatial technologies. A spatially-explicit multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was implemented with GIS, using a number of geospatial data products including Landsat satellite images, ASTER Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and National Forest Reserve map covering the study area. Various derivatives, including land use and land cover (LU/LC) map, slope, and factor maps were generated in other to produce a biomass energy potential map of the region. This research found that over 4,013,475 Ha (45% of the region) were found to be suitable for the production of biomass energy.