The Charcoal Project

What will it take?

What will it take to tip the scale in favor of a global crash program to swap out three-stones-and-a-pot for energy-efficient stoves, kilns, and sustainable alternative biofuels?

Port-au-Prince

Will Haiti be to bioenergy what Katrina was to climate change?

New Orleans

How long before Al Gore, Angelina, or Bono take on bionergy as the next big inconvenient truth? The Charcoal Project’s intelligence services tell us there is already a film in the works.  Will Bono embrace the rocket stove onstage to his fan’s delight?

Perhaps it will be the lure of a multi-billion dollar global market in carbon offsets from stoves, kilns, and briquettes programs that will do the trick. Or maybe it will be the on-the-ground realities of  implementing REDD that will undo the Gordian knot.

And the point is…?

Actually, there are four points and they boil down to this:

1. Is there a need for a global stove, kilns, biomass program?

2. Is the bionergy/biomass community ready to step up to the global challenge or will it cling to its small-scale, silo-ed, buckshot approach?

3. Is the world, especially the development community, ready to recognize and embrace the issue with the same furious passion it has correctly championed clean water, HIV/AIDS, climate change, malaria, and the eradication of polio, to name a few?

Getting the message across in Lagos

4. What will it take to move the world’s needle in the direction of a global effort to swap out three stones and a pot for better stoves, kilns, and fuels?

So?

Here’s what I think.

I response to the first question, my gut tells me there is a need but I’m not a scientist or development expert. I realize that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach in the way condoms, sex ed, and retrovirals come to mind when combating HIV/AIDS. Or the the mosquito net for malaria. This is perhaps the most difficult question to answer.

However, if the answer to the above is in the affirmative, then I am confident that practitioners and champions of bioenergy/biomass technology can rally around a unified goal. Whether you care about indoor air pollution, climate change, environmental degradation, or poverty alleviation, low-cost technological fixes and clean, sustainable biomass fuels exists to solve these overlapping global challenges. We might differ on how to get there exactly but I’m certain the likes of Hedon, PCIA, Aprovecho, Canada, Uganda, Brazil, Haiti, USAID, EPA, DOE, World Bank, UNEP, WHO, WFP, Berkeley U, MIT, and so many other organizations in so many countries can find enough common ground to rally around a shared vision. We have a choir, now all we need a hymn sheet, to answer question 2.

My answer to number 3 is an unequivocal yes. We know what the problems are and we have the technology to fix them. All this at a very low cost compared to, say, the financing of clean coal development or even a single nuclear power plant. When I explain the magnitude of the problem, its impact on half the world’s population, and the existence of readily available solutions, people I speak with invariably get excited about solving this problem. I’m certain you all get the same response wherever you are.  In the words of Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a leading climate change scientist at the University of California San Diego, solving the charcoal/woodfuel problem is the “low hanging fruit” for climate change…. and, I would add, environmental degradation… and indoor air pollution… and energy poverty.

So what will it take? Three things: marketing/communications, lobbying, and resources. Launching global marketing and advocacy campaigns is not rocket stove science:

Nike ad in spanish

Marocco

"Yes. One dozen rocket stoves, please."

Nike, Coca Cola, IBM have managed global campaigns. As Tuyeni Mwampamba mentioned in our interview last month, there’s a real disconnect when the poorest of the poor can afford to have a cell phone (Nokia? Sony?) yet still use inefficient stoves and biomass. Maybe a free cell phone with every stove?

Perhaps Haiti will help us get the ball rolling. Either way, let this be a call to all in the bioenergy field to start thinking global, not just local.

I know not everyone will agree with our views on this but let the discussion begin and let’s hammer out a consensus because the stakes are high and the time to act is now.

Kim & Nina

The Charcoal Project

Today’s NYT article titled Ecosystem in Peru Is Losing a Key Ally tells the familiar story of how poverty and cultural tastes are rapidly sealing the fate of the arid-dwelling huarango, a unique species of trees that can live more than one thousand years. According to the article, haurango rivals teak in hardness and its embers are prized for outlasting any other form of wood charcoal. It is also viewed by Peruvians “as the prime wood for charcoal to cook a signature chicken dish called ‘pollo broaster.’ ”

(Judging from the online recipes, comments, and images, the dish might make a good substitute for a bucket of KFC.)

In addition to its longevity, this species is critical to the water cycle in this parched coastal strip of the Atacama-Sechura Desert and is an important source of nutrition for the local community. “The huarango captures moisture coming from the west as sea mist. Its roots are among the longest of any tree, extending more than 150 feet to tap subterranean water channels.” According to the article, only about 1 percent of the original forest cover remains. It appears the impoverished communities that live in this unforgiving land depend on converting trees into charcoal for their survival. A kilo of huarango charcoal fetches about U$0.50.

Culture — but mostly poverty — seem to be at the greatest threats to this amazing tree species which grows nowhere else on the planet.

I looks like the huarango’s survival may well depend on the rapid implementation of a fuel-efficient stoves and alternative biofuel briquettes program. Let’s see what agency or NGO step up to the plate.