LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) – The Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (CDM) may end from 2013 unless the world can agree and put into force a new round of carbon emissions targets before then, a U.N. paper has said.
The CDM enabled a $20.6 billion trade in carbon emissions rights between rich and poor countries in 2009, to help developed countries meet their carbon emissions caps under Kyoto from 2008-2012.
The world has so far failed to agree a new round of commitments, in faltering U.N. talks. Countries which are party to the Kyoto Protocol asked the U.N. climate change secretariat in June to report back on legal options to avoid a political vacuum, or gap, at the end of 2012. (More)
Stand of Sequoia Sempervirens in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California, USA.
As Climate Change negotiations get underway in Bonn, a coalition of green groups has released a report sharply criticizing the United States for its projected use of biomass for electricity generation.
Specifically, the group warns that increased demand for wood for bioenergy is triggering logging and expansions of tree plantations using genetically modified tree species in the United States, Ghana, the Congo, Brazil, and West Papua.
“U.S. plans for large-scale expansion of bioenergy, the promotion of bioachar, and the recent USDA approval of a large-scale release of GE (genetically engineered) trees in the American South, threaten to devastate forests and communities,” says the press release.
The report claims wood is projected to become the main source of renewable energy in the U.S.
“The Senate version of the U.S. climate bill, the American Power Act has alarming provisions that will dramatically increase production of biochar,” explained Rachel Smolker, of Biofuelwatch in the U.S. “The idea that we can heal the climate by burning trees and burying charcoal is unfounded, untested and dangerous. A letter to Congress from 90 top scientists this past week challenged industry claims that burning trees for energy is ‘carbon neutral.”
(Read more)
The Congo Basin, via WWF
Geoffrey York, Globe & Mail (Canada) May. 24, 2010 — In the remote interior of Congo, the news was buzzing around the villages: a Canadian company needed workers for a seed farm to produce jatropha plants, a new biofuel for global markets.
The company asked for 20 workers to arrive at 7:30 on a Wednesday morning. “You wouldn’t believe it – there were 800 people who showed up, some of them a few days before, and they slept on the road,” says Louis Tourillon, founder and CEO of Carbon2Green, a Montreal-based company.
“Those people need the work. They need what we’re bringing there. And without climate change, we wouldn’t be there doing that. The potential impact of what we’re doing is just mind-boggling.”
Africa has long been known as the biggest victim of climate change: the region of the world most vulnerable to the droughts and floods that are expected to increase in the coming decades. It’s a serious threat: water scarcity alone could affect 250 million Africans by 2025. But some entrepreneurs and financiers believe that Africa can also benefit from the economic opportunities of climate change. They hold a radically different vision of the climate trends, seeing the chance for jobs and development, instead of just doom and gloom. (Read more)
Suddenly everyone’s looking at the story of mobile phones in Africa as the silver bullet to just about anything.
Is someone selling you counterfeit malaria pills? Let a mobile phone check on that for you. (
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Too poor to have a bank account? Try mobile banking.(
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Are you a herder in Kenya or Tanzania and have a sick goat? Track it on a mobile phone. (
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Someone trying to pull a real estate scam on you in Lagos? Let Google’s Android handle that for you.(
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With a quarter of the sub-Saharan Africa population now connected to a mobile phone network, analysts at the World Bank are wondering if lessons from the mobile phone model just might be able to help address rural poverty in Africa. The idea, presented in a
World Bank policy research paper and first reported by
IAP Update, is to replicate the business model of mobile phone operators in Africa to introduce decentralized access to electricity from renewable sources, such as wind and solar.
This could turn out to be a nifty solution that won’t require the massive capital and technological investments traditionally associated with the expansion of national grids. This solution would be more practical in rural where the cost of electrification is highest. What’s more, because we’re talking about renewable energy sources, these “decentralized renewable-energy technologies” could be paid for by the carbon finance market.
So will the World Bank go for it? Will it invest in biomass energy technology? Probably both. We should know more when The Bank rolls out its new Energy Strategy in 2011.
The upcoming G8 & G20 summit in Huntsville, Canada, makes this the perfect time to write about a topic somewhat neglected by our blog recently: biochar.
Bring it on Climate Change!
So what is this thing they call biochar, you ask? It’s been described as the Swiss Army knife, or the “killer app” of climate solutions.
Stephen J Dodds, Professor of Control Engineering at the University of East London, gives us a clue.
Biochar is a 2,000 year-old practice that converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer that can hold carbon, boost food security and discourage deforestation. The process creates a fine-grained, highly porous charcoal that helps soils retain nutrients and water.
Biochar can be an important tool to increase food security and cropland diversity in areas with severely depleted soils, scarce organic resources, and inadequate water and chemical fertilizer supplies.
Biochar also improves water quality and quantity by increasing soil retention of nutrients and agrochemicals for plant and crop utilization. More nutrients stay in the soil instead of leaching into groundwater and causing pollution.
The carbon in biochar resists degradation and can hold carbon in soils for hundreds to thousands of years. Biochar is produced through pyrolysis or gasification — processes that heat biomass in the absence (or under reduction) of oxygen.
My note: biochar is an important byproduct of the good combustion in certain improved cookstoves, like WorldStove’s Lucia stove, among others.
The Lucia stove is so cute we want to pinch its handles!
In addition to creating a soil enhancer, sustainable biochar practices can produce oil and gas byproducts that can be used as fuel, providing clean, renewable energy. When the biochar is buried in the ground as a soil enhancer, the system combats climate change by becoming “carbon negative.”
We can use this simple, yet powerful, technology to store 2.2 gigatons of carbon annually by 2050. It’s one of the few technologies that is relatively inexpensive, widely applicable, and quickly scalable. We really can’t afford not to pursue it. To put 2.2 gigatons in context, that’s the amount of CO2 produced by China in 1990. Today it emits 6.1 gigatons.
Thank you, Professor!
Ok, you say, but what does this have to do with a bunch of suits meeting in a remote town in Canada’s interior?
We all know that these periodic meetings of the club of wealthiest nations produce a lot of hot air… Oops… I meant, C02 emissions.
Now, a group calling itself the Huntsville Project is trying to get every summit delegation to offset its C02 emissions by investing in biochar projects around the world. (Plus, who really wants to invest in a methane digester? And offsetting with reforestation is sooooooo last summit.)
The simplicity of the idea is one reason why this just might happen.
Here’s how it works:
1. A country chooses from a global list of ongoing and planned biochar projects for their offsets.
2. The money is collected in a global Biochar Climate Mitigation Fund. Biochar entrepreneurs will then use microcredit for affordable finance to start New Carbon Economy biochar projects.
3. The Biochar Climate Mitigation Fund will be operated by a foundation with the highest levels of accountability, oversight and transparency
The challenge now — and the real reason why we’re writing about this — is that the Huntsville Project must get Canada and every delegation attending the June 25 – 27 summit on board. We think this is a good idea because it will bring some much needed attention to biochar as an potentially critical solution to real carbon sequestration, food security, clean water, and many other challenges.
Do your part by signing the petition asking Canada and visiting delegations to offset their carbon footprint with biochar!
Visit http://www.newcarboneconomy.info/
