The Charcoal Project

A lesson in Coca Cola's World Cup video.

Does anyone know someone at Coca Cola?

We sure could use their deft marketing expertise as displayed in the video above made by the corporate giant for the World Cup! (Click on the image to play the video.)

Granted, selling the beautiful game loved by billions is easier than promoting energy efficiency technology and policies for the base of the pyramid.

Still, making a video that mists the eyes of the most hardened anti-soccer mysanthrope is no small feat.

While we wait for Coca Cola to helps us produce the perfect video that will help the energy-efficiency-technology-and-policies-solutions community tell its story (we can start by giving it a real name!) , we’ve compiled four slideshows recently published in the New York Times that we think help visualize the energy hunger/energy obesity world we live in.

Two of these four slideshows appear in Andy Revkin’s weekly roundup of green news on the NYT’s website.

Finding Design Solutions for the forgotten ones

William Kamkwamba attended the MIT sessions

The first piece is a slideshow narrated by the Time’s Andy Revkin reporting on the great work being done by Amy Smith at MIT’s D-Lab. We are thrilled to see that her annual sustainable design workshop has this year brought together folks from around the world to think about simple design solutions to many of the challenges faced by those living at the base of the pyramid.

This is a good opportunity to note that Smith was an early booster of our work here at The Charcoal Project.

No, really. These photos are worth more 1000 words!

Tibetan glaciers' vanishing act

The second piece is a more sobering slideshow about the dramatic recession of Asia’s Tibetan glaciers. The images are taken from a current photo exhibition at New York-based Asia Society. The idea of documenting receding Tibetan glaciers by matching photographic images taken from the same vantage point is not new. In fact, one of our scientists at The Nature Conservancy did this back 2005 using photographs taken in the first half of the XXth century.

Read New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff’s take on the images.

Add concrete, mix, and voila!

The third slideshow is titled China’s Instant Cities and the images speak for themselves.

Pizza delivery for Apt. 1,288,757 - A? (Photo: Christoph Gielen)

Quoting from the story intro: This year China will add more than 17 million people to its urban population. To house this unprecedented wave of migration from the country side, cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou are building countless high-rise residential towers at breakneck speed.

Climate Change? What Climate Change?

Finally, the last slideshow is a collection of images documenting the record-breaking heatwave that is baking many parts of the world, including our hometown, New York City.

We hope this selection of New York Times slideshow will help people who have the power to effect change to connect the dots because the time to take action is now!

Kim & Nina

“Time to come together to make smart decisions about cookstoves.”  — Dean Still, Aprovecho Research Center.

Of all the improved cookstoves currently in use around the world, the rocket stove is probably the best known and perhaps the most imitated. And with good reason, too. A well-designed and well-built rocket stove can cut fuel consumption and emissions in half, sometimes more, depending on the fuel and combustion type. The stove, which can be modified to burn wood, charcoal, and briquettes, has been adapted to prepare the traditional meals of many cultures: injera bread in Ethiopia, tortillas in Guatemala, and, nan bread in India. You wouldn’t be wrong to think of the rocket stove as the Swiss Army knife of improved cookstoves.

If imitation is indeed the most sincere form of flattery, then you’d think the stove’s creators would be thrilled about its success.

“It’s been a real eye opener,” Dean Still tells us over the phone.

Still heads the Aprovecho Research Center, a sort of Manhattan Project for stove testing and design in Oregon where the stove was first designed and built back in the 80s.

Clarifying his statement, Still says he doesn’t object to others imitating the stove. In fact, as a humanitarian, he’d like to see the stove deployed everywhere it’s needed across the world. The problem arises when the stove is poorly copied, which happens too often. The technology is not complex but a deviation of one centimeter can have major effects on the stove’s performance. Using inferior quality material can reduce the stoves life expectancy to just a few months.

The result can be a stove that underperforms and falls short of expectations among end users and investors, which, in the case of many stove projects, is usually an international development agency or a non-profit.

“We want stoves that meet minimum standards so that people and donors can be assured that when they invest in a stove solution, they know what they’re getting.”

Lack of standards may also be the reason why less than 10 million stoves were deployed in 2009, according to the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air. The figure is woefully below the 177 million units that the WHO says must be distributed to cut in half the number of people without access to improved stoves worldwide.

Still has devoted the last quarter century to developing stoves for the world’s poor and you can tell he is wading waist deep in the wreckage of bad stove concepts, poor execution, and unfulfilled performance expectations.

Granted, he says, there have been many success along the way. But the downside of failed projects is a donor community that has grown skeptical of stove projects that overpromised and under-delivered solutions to reduce mortality from indoor air pollution-induced, alleviate poverty, and protect the environment.

This time it’s different

Yet despite the collective roller-coaster for the stoving community, Still thinks this time it may be different. One reason the tide may be turning is Climate Change. That’s because a growing number of scientists have identified black carbon (BC), a major byproduct of inefficient biomass combustion, as an important contributor in Climate Change.

Black carbon in soot is the dominant man-made absorber of solar radiation in the atmosphere. It is approximately 1 million times stronger than CO2 per mass unit of mass – and contributes to the warming of the atmosphere at the global level. Black carbon also warms the atmosphere by absorbing thermal infrared radiation from the ground and within clouds. Furthermore, because it directly heats surfaces on which it is deposited and changes surface albedo (surface reflectivity), black carbon is a major contributor to the accelerated melting of Arctic sea and land ice, glaciers and seasonal snow covers.

The upshot is that black carbon has a much shorter average atmospheric life time than CO2 and other GHGs (on the order of days to weeks for black carbon versus years to centuries for most GHGs). Recent studies identify black carbon as the second- or third-largest overall contributor to current human-driven global warming, surpassed only by carbon dioxide and possibly methane. A disproportionate share of the disease burden associated with black carbon sources is borne by women and young children who spend a larger share of their time indoors and are thus subjected to higher exposures.

Beyond the link between cookstoves and Climate Change, a lengthy New Yorker article published last year that prominently featured Aprovecho’s work was the clearest sign yet that the stove movement — and the problems it seeks to address — are finally gaining public attention.

The January earthquake in Haiti has also drawn much attention to the link between energy poverty, unsustainable biomass use, environmental degradation, and humanitarian disasters.

Compared to reducing atmospheric CO2, cutting BC emissions may prove to be a quicker and less expensive solution for reducing climate change.  According to a recent USAID study, of all the intervention methods available to cut BC by heavy emitters like India and China – ranging from retrofitting polluting diesel engines, two-stroke engines, and switching to CNG to power vehicles – swapping inefficient cookstoves and improving biomass fuels provide the highest mitigation cost effectiveness as measured in $/tCO2eq.

The 40,000 feet perspective on standards.

Few institutions outside Aprovecho have the breadth of experience developing and testing cookstove technologies. After more than three decades developing and improving them, one thing is clear, says Still, “there is not one cookstove solution, there are many, depending on their use.” One of the main differences is a stove’s fuel consumption and emissions performance. This is why coming up with benchmarks and standards for fuel consumption and emissions is an urgent mission for the stoving community, says Still, who points to the good work being done in this area by groups like PCIA, the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air.

Standards for cookstoves do exist, nonetheless. Some of them have been developed by Aprovecho as an important measure of a stove’s performance. These benchmarks, like the Water Boiling Test (WBT), are used to evaluate a stove’s performance while completing a basic task. In the case of the WBT, a stove is made to “simulate” meal preparation by boiling five liters of water and simmering it for 45 minutes. The test is designed to measure the stove’s heat transfer and combustion efficiency, which are then measured against a benchmark.

[EDITORIAL NOTE: Aprovecho and Shell Foundation, a longtime player in the indoor air pollution abatement field, have proposed benchmark for fuel use, Carbon Monoxide (CO) and Particulate Matter (PM) emission. These benchmarks are designed to complement the WBT. The PCIA is leading the charge on benchmarks.]

While easy, quick, and inexpensive, the WBT only measures one aspect of the stove’s technical performance, not necessarily what the stove can achieve in real households under real conditions.  A Controlled Cooking Test and a Kitchen Performance Test have been developed to provide more practical testing results.

But before the stoving community can develop the perfect universal test for determining a stove’s performance, it must first answer a fundamental question, which is, what’s more important, reducing fuel consumption or reducing black carbon and other noxious emissions.

The answer is, of course, both, but designing a stove that meets the highest current ratings in emissions reduction and energy consumption at a reasonable cost has so far proven elusive. Coming up with the right standards will be critical to getting cookstove projects to scale, especially since carbon-credit financing will be vital for some projects to make financial sense.

In a way, the future of cookstove adoption worldwide may very well depend on getting the cookstove standards right.

“If you want to reduce fuel use, then you can make a stove that does that for not a whole lot of money, Still says. But if you want to reduce emissions, then the stove is going to cost a bit more. Probably more than individual families can afford to pay, which means it will have to be subsidized one way or another. This also means governments will need to make this a priority because the cost of a low emission stove may be above a market driven price.”

Keeping both eyes on the ball

When I ask Still if he ever tires of the geologic pace at which things move in the development world, the petty infighting within a chronically underfunded movement, and the frustration of laboring in a field that has yet to gain the notoriety of more high-profile causes like the HIV-AIDS, or malaria eradication, he answers simply, “no.”

“This is about real people, women and children, dying for lack of access to a simple fix,” he says.

“The real face of this is when you go to Guatemala, like I did last year with Dr. Kirk Smith. You walk into these little villages. It’s beautiful outside. They sky is blue. They have their little plot of corn. You walk into a house and there are six kids, and three of them are coughing their guts out, and one of them has such accute pneumonia that you have to rush the child to the hospital.  The family is too poor. The wife has six kids, and she has to work the farm, and so she is condemned by poverty to watch her kids die. And that’s because of the carbon monoxide and the damn smoke.”

So what will it take to get move this issue higher on the development agenda?

The math and the science have not been there to show how serious the problem is. The donors want to make sure that their money is well spent. They say, “I’ve got malaria, HIV, and you say there’s a problem but you can’t prove it? You say that a stove is going to help, but, you say you can’t prove that either?”

The good news is that big steps are underway that should help solidify the case for energy efficiency cooking technology and improved fuels.

One important step is the imminent publication of a decade-long study that will help make the case for energy efficient and emissions-reducing stoves. The study, by Dr. Kirk Smith of UC Berkeley, is expected to make the definitive case that eliminating indoor air smoke should be an urgent public health priority.

Additionally, India recently launched a national program that is designed to put millions of improved cookstoves in the hands of the energy poor. A project on this scale should yield valuable practical experience.

Finally, several large conservation organizations are exploring the feasibility of launching  national biomass energy efficiency programs across the entire supply chain of countries where biodiversity is under serious threat. The idea is to make stove projects replicable around the globe.

And, on an editorial note, The Charcoal Project is partnering with a university to jointly carry out a global cost-benefit analysis study that would show the true social and environmental cost of continuing to burn biomass under a business-as-usual scenario.

So, what now, Dean?

We have been manufacturing stoves that cut fuel use and emissions in half. But now the health and climate change communities want us to make stoves that have the same fuel use but also reduce emissions by say 90%. This means we have to be very rational now and make good decisions, because the bar has been raised for very good reasons.

And that’s why, my brother, we have a lab. That’s why we have to be understated, not overstated. Most importantly, we have to be together, pull together, and not exaggerate. We have to make a new generation of great stoves that are also loved by cooks, that make great food while protecting both cooks and our fragile planet.

Watch a video of Aprovecho’s rocket stove:

via IAP Updates/USAID

Mon May 17, 3:08 am ET

BEIJING (AFP)  More than two million Chinese youths die each year from health problems related to indoor air pollution, with nearly half of them under five years of age, state media cited a government study as saying.

The study released by the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said indoor pollution levels can often be 5-10 times higher than those measured in the nation’s notoriously bad outdoor air, the China News Service said.

This indoor pollution causes respiratory and other conditions that kill 2.2 million youths each year, one million of whom are under the age of five, the report said, citing the study released on Sunday.

The study said dangerous indoor pollutants include formaldehyde, benzene, ammonia and radon.

It said formaldehyde posed the biggest threat. It is often found in building materials and new furniture in China and can be slowly released into indoor environments over the course of several years.

It said long-term exposure to such substances can cause a range of health problems including respiratory diseases, mental impairment and cancer, with young children, foetuses in utero and the elderly at most risk.

China’s massive economic expansion of the past three decades has made it one of the world’s most polluted countries as environmental and health concerns are trampled amid an overriding focus on industrial growth.

Countless cities are smothered in smog while hundreds of millions of citizens lack access to clean drinking water.

A 2007 World Bank report said 750,000 Chinese die prematurely each year due to air and water pollution — a figure edited out of final versions of the report, reportedly after China warned it could cause social unrest.

Equipping 50 percent of  households that burn biomass with improved stoves by 2015 would cost about $2 billion upfront but would almost immediately yield $37 billion in fuel savings, leaving a net gain to the world’s energy poor of some $35 billion.

Over a ten year period this would generate an economic return of U$105 billion.

These gains would come from savings in health related costs and productivity gains, according to a 2006 World Health Organization study sent to us by Dr. Eva A. Rehfuess, a co-author on the report and now with the University of Munich. (Dr. Rehfuess, your work makes you our hero of the day!)

The study, entitled Evaluation of the cost and benefit of household energy and health interventions at global and regional levels (see the WHO web page here) concludes that the gains in health and productivity far outweigh the overall cost of the interventions.

A single stove option was modeled in this global study due to data constraints and the complexities of attempting to reflect different stove options in different parts of the world.

Costs and benefits were modelled under three specific interventions:

Scenario I: reducing by 50% the population without access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by 2015

Scenario II: reducing by 50% the population without access to biofuel (ethanol) by 2015

Scenario III: reducing by 50% the population without access to chimney-less “rocket” stoves by 2015

The study reveals that making improved stoves available to all those still burning biomass fuels and coal on traditional stoves would result in a negative intervention cost of US$ 34 billion and generate an economic return of US$ 105 billion a year over a ten-year period.

The net present value, shown in Table 6 (above), is the estimated annual economic surplus, and is calculated by subtracting net costs from economic benefits. The results show that the scenarios lead to net economic benefits of between US$ 77 billion and US$ 139 billion per year at global level. A significant proportion of these benefits is seen in WPR-B. Globally, the net present value tends to be higher in urban areas than in rural areas.

This study shows that health and productivity gains make household energy interventions potentially good value for money.

Missing from the study are the financial co-benefits associated with reduction of black carbon from burning biomass more efficiently and the potential for income generation from carbon credits generated by these stove projects.

Does anyone have any idea what the financial potential for these are?

We’re thrilled to finally see some numbers attached to a cost benefit of improved cookstoves!

Call it a stove in every pot. Make that two stoves in every pot.

That’s because Peru could have bought every rural poor two energy efficient stoves in 2007 for the equivalent of what Indoor Air Pollution cost the country.

As we discussed last week, The Charcoal Project is leading a research on a global analysis that would put a price tag on the inefficient domestic combustion of biomass as practiced today in the vast majority of the developing world.

Our friends at the World Bank were kind enough to point us to their Country Environmental Analysis (CEAs) reports on their website.

We randomly selected the 2007 assessment for Peru. The dense 300+ page document does contain however some very valuable information, including this eye-popping table below:

Here’s the fine print to satisfy your inner development geek:

3.39 Total annual cost of indoor air pollution is estimated at 0.55-1.0 billion soles, with a mean estimate of 0.78 billion (Table 3.22). The cost of mortality for adults is based on the value of statistical life (VSL) as a high bound and HCA as a low bound, and on the human capital approach (HCA) for children. The cost of morbidity includes the cost of illness (medical treatment, and value of lost time for adults) and DALYs from morbidity valued at GDP per capita to reflect the cost of reduced well-being associated with illness. The value of time for adults is 75 percent of urban and rural average hourly wages, which are 3.8 SI. and 2.5 SI. respectively.

3.40 There is very little information about the frequency of doctor visits, emergency visits and hospitalization for COPD patients in any country in the world. Schulman et al. (2001) and Niederman et al. (1999) provide some information on this from the United States and Europe. Figures derived from these studies are applied to Peru in this chapter. Estimated lost work days per year is based on frequency of estimated medical treatment plus an additional 7 days for each hospitalization and one extra day for each doctor and emergency visit. These days were added to reflect time needed for recovery from illness.

3.41 To estimate the cost of a new case of COPD, the medical cost and value of time losses have been discounted over a 20-year duration of illness. An annual real increase of 2 percent in medical cost and value of time has been applied to reflect an average expected increase in annual labor productivity and real wages. The costs were discounted at 3 percent per year, a rate commonly applied by WHO for health effects.

A conversion shows that the high end cost of IAP (rounded to 1 billion Peruvian soles) in the table above is equivalent to 321,123,160 in 2007 US Dollar

Add to this sum the cost of labor lost, deterioration of environmental services, and CO2 emissions and I bet the amount is closer to 500,000 million USD.

This figure is purely speculative but we hope our pending global review will shed more light on the actual cost.

Oh, in case you were wondering, U$321,123,160 will buy you about 16 million rocket stoves at $20 a pop.

There were about six million rural poor in Peru in 2007.