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January 2011

Energy poverty alleviation: a perspective from Africa’s scientists

A few facts about energy access and electricity production in Africa: * About 70% of Africans have no access to electricity. * The entire electric capacity of sub-Saharan Africa is 68% that of Spain. * South Africa’s electricity generation accounts for more than half of all SSA capacity. * Commercial users register power outages over […]

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Haiti’s charcoal crisis comes into focus, but is anyone listening?

(Reporter William Wheeler writes about Haiti’s addiction to biomass in the most recent issue of Good Magazine)

Elizabeth Sipple, an agronomist who recently took a post as the director of International Lifeline Fund’s Haiti program, is working to wean Haiti off a lethal addiction: wood and charcoal, which supply the majority of Haiti’s energy needs.

The main source of revenue in the countryside is cutting trees for firewood and charcoal production—part of a hugely inefficient wood habit that consumes trees much more quickly than they can regenerate.

This dependency has cost the country its forests, sapped its fertility, and set the stage for an increasing series of natural disasters, including—by driving migration into the congested, anarchically-constructed capital—the human impact of the earthquake that killed roughly a quarter of a million people.

Haiti’s charcoal crisis comes into focus, but is anyone listening? Read More »

NEWS: Somalia cracks down on charcoal exports to Arabian peninsula

Headline:  Somali navy seizes vessel loaded with charcoal off Somali coast Source: (AHN) Reporter: Abdi Hajji Hussein Location: Mogadishu, Somalia Published: January 3, 2011 11:17 am EST The newly coalesced Somali navy has seized a vessel they said was illegal exporting charcoal from the nation, an official said Monday. In an interview with government-run Radio

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