The Charcoal Project » How-to

New briquette-making manuals from Legacy Foundation

Jean Kim Chaix — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 14:10:25 +0000

We received the following notification from our friends at Legacy Foundation and are happy to pass it along.

"Legacy Foundation is happy to announce the publication and availability of three new biomass briquette supporting manuals."

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The Charcoal Project & the creation of a global market for renewable energy & efficiency solutions

Jean Kim Chaix — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:35:33 +0000

Dispatches from: Emerging Solutions for the Energy Poor. Technological, Entrepreneurial & Institutional Challenges NOVEMBER 5 and 6, 2010 Wittemyer Courtroom University of Colorado Law School Wolf Law Building 401 UCB, 2450 Kittredge Loop Boulder, CO 80309 USA The 2010 Conference is designed to be a sequel to the 2009 World Energy Justice Conference (WEJC 2009) which began examining ways of mainstreaming safe, clean, and efficient energy for the world’s Energy Poor (EP). The EP number two and a half billion people who live on less than $1-2 a day and have no access to modern energy services. The 2010 conference … Continue reading →

Marketing to the BoP, the death of appropriate technology, and false green solutions

Jean Kim Chaix — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:00:35 +0000

Best of the Web, Monday, 13th September (Click on the titles to read the full story.) 1. If you’re trying to sell stoves or briquettes to the energy poor, then this one’s for you! Marketing to the bottom of the pyramid – Almost a third of the world’s population earns $2.50 or less a day. The enormity of this disparity takes my breath away, but there’s an interesting flip side to it: That’s a market of more than five billion dollars a day. Add the next segment ($5 a day) and it’s easy to see that every single day, the … Continue reading →

The Twitteruniverse roundup: MDG failure, money talks, mapping the biosphere, and delivering energy to the energy-poor

Jean Kim Chaix — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:50:49 +0000

Folks, We’re back from Labor Day, the long weekend that marks the unofficial end of summer and the start of the rest of the business year here in America. Before we launch into a new, fresh round of stories about energy poverty alleviation and energy efficient biomass combustion solutions, we want to share with you a roundup of stories that caught our attention on the Twitterverse over the week-end. UN researchers say its 15-year anti-poverty plan fails to address jobs, income equality. – “The United Nations is ignoring the critical role of jobs and income equality in its 15-year strategy … Continue reading →

Tanzania: Charcoal-making in five easy pieces

Jean Kim Chaix — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:33:35 +0000

We published last month an interview with Dennis Tessier of ARTI-TZ, a Tanzania-based non-profit working to promote the manufacturing and marketing of briquettes made from the char produced in improved charcoal kilns. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Tanzania’s forests are disappearing at a whopping rate of 4,200 square kilometers (1,620 sq. miles) annually. That’s about four times the size of New York City or half the size of Virunga National Park in the DRC. In our Q&A with Dennis he mentioned ARTI-Tanzania’s Waste to Wealth (W2W) project and we wanted to find out more. Below … Continue reading →

Why the market alone cannot solve the clean cookstove gap

Jean Kim Chaix — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:08:29 +0000

Can it be that the emphasis on finding market-based solutions to energy poverty alleviation and the large-scale deployment of improved cookstoves is just not practical? "Probably," say a group of researchers investigating the pressures placed on grass-roots NGOs to adopt market-based approaches to solving household energy and health issues in the developing world.

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Peace Corps launches site providing resources for improved cookstoves and ovens

Jean Kim Chaix — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:20:20 +0000

This post comes to us via the good people at the IAP (Indoor Air Pollution Updates). We thought it might be of interest to our visitors as a resource.

Peace Corps – Improved Stoves and Ovens - Welcome to the Peace Corps Clean Indoor Air/ Improved Cooking Toolkit, your one-stop source for reliable and relevant information about improved cookstoves, ovens and biogas applications appropriate for Volunteer communities.

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Compilation of Energy-Efficient Cookstove videos on YouTube (via IAP Updates/USAID)

Jean Kim Chaix — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:16:06 +0000

We are pleased to share with you this list of 25 cookstove-related videos posted on YouTube and curated by the good people over at USAID's Indoor Air Pollution News Update.

Thanks IAP Update for doing this!

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A Man, a Stove, a Mission

Jean Kim Chaix — Mon, 10 May 2010 14:56:22 +0000

Nathaniel Mulcahy’s speaks with the urgency and precision of someone on a mission and with little time.

Although he has patiently and politely dedicated the better part of an hour to our conversation, I know that the moment he hangs up he will be off to complete a million tasks on his to-do list.

Mulcahy has good reasons to be in a hurry. The first one is that he cheated death seven years ago following a really bad accident, so he’s a man on his second chance.

The second reason, which is linked to the first, is that he is determined to bring energy-efficient cookstoves to the world’s 2.4 billion people who sit at the bottom of the world’s energy ladder. They are the poorest of the poor who lack access to modern fuels and must make do with wood, charcoal, and animal dung to meet their everyday energy needs.

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Tool: generating carbon credits from stove projects (PCIA)

Jean Kim Chaix — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 23:08:50 +0000

The latest quarterly update from the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (Bulletin 23)is dedicated to harnessing the power of the carbon credit market to support stove projects around the world.