The W+ Standard measured time savings generated by the Indonesia Domestic Biogas Programme (IDPB) for 4500 women in two selected provinces: East Java and West Nusa Tenggara. The IDBP is implemented by Hivos, in collaboration with the Indonesian Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, and the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV). Hivos has assisted more than 13,000 households to install biogas across nine provinces in Indonesia. Through the application of the W+ Standard, Hivos seeks to further leverage the benefits generated by its intervention, particularly for women’s groups.
The feasibility study conducted by the WOCAN team in November 2014, showed that the most significant and observable impact of biogas installment for women was time saved. The saving in time accrue largely from reduced time in cooking and collection of fuel wood, as well as spending less time in cleaning the kitchen and cooking pots. Indeed, the clean energy produced by the biogas produces minimal smoke soot, which in turn decreases cleaning time.
Therefore, the project focused on the application of the W+ time method to measure the time saved by women biogas users. The time units generated by the W+ project will be used for further empowering women’s groups in the selected project areas.
The application of the W+ Time method in two project areas of West Nusa Tenggara and East Java show that there is a net time savings of 61 minutes or 1.1 hours a day for women biogas users. When applied to the total number of project beneficiaries that have installed biogas for two years and less, the total time savings generated is 16,041,962 hours. To translate the amount of hours saved for the project beneficiaries into W+ units, the total is divided by eight, which is the average number of working hours in a day. The total number of W+ Time Units generated is 2,005, 245.WOCAN is in discussion with HIVOS a bout application of the W+ Income/Assets method, to quantify additional benefits resulting from the biogas program that are accruing to women users.