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

“With any reforestation campaign, you have to find first a solution for energy.”

– Antonio Perera, Program Manager, UNEP, Haiti

The satellite image compares forest cover along the Haiti-Dominican Republic Border.

A recent New York Times article explains what happens when a country’s energy-poor population exhausts its last remaining fuelwood resources.

The country is Haiti and the picture painted is not pretty.

With much of its forest cover gone, the poorest (and oldest) developing country in the Western Hemisphere’s stands now on the brink of environmental catastrophe.

The story, reported by Nathaniel Gronewold of Greenwire, the web-based environmental policy and news service, describes a panorama that may resonate with a number of Sub-Saharan countries that are themselves today on the brink of environmental disasters. The problem in Haiti — and Uganda, Malawi, and Tanzania, to name a few — is driven by energy poverty.

“The country’s 10 million residents meet 60 percent of their commercial and residential energy needs with charcoal. It is used in most household cooking but also runs bakeries, laundries, sugar refineries and rum distilleries.

Charcoal production is a major factor in the deforestation that experts say has felled 98 percent of Haiti’s tree cover, with the remaining 2 percent disappearing fast. While mature trees provide the best material for charcoal production, the scarcity of wood has forced people to take smaller and smaller trees and shrubs. Today people are even pulling roots to make charcoal.

Haitians are aware of the damage being done to their landscape, but they say the deforestation for charcoal persists because there are few employment opportunities. About 80 percent of the population survives on less than $2 per day in income; the country ranks 149 out of 182 nations on the Human Development Index, a comparative measure of the quality of life.

But that drive to extract more and more from diminishing resources is only adding to the Haitians’ problems.”

Despite the gloom and doom, there is hope for Haiti, the story tells us, namely in the creation of small-scale, home-grown solutions designed to address energy poverty issues. The government and CHIBAS, a local environmental non-profit have high hopes for the bioenergy they hope to produce from a neo-tropical version of India’s jatropha plant. UNEP is also planning a massive, 20-year reforestation program. But, as the project manager says, “…with any reforestation campaign, you have to find first a solution for energy”.

The article glancingly mentions  a briquettes program made from recycled urban waste paper. There is sadly nothing about energy efficient stoves or Amy Smith’s bagasse-based briquettes project. These constitute major omissions considering the array of substitute fuel and fuel-efficient projects that we know are underway on the ground.

Folks,

We received from Amy Smith (MIT/D-Lab) in today’s post a link to a ten minute YouTube video that is essentially a how-to-make-your-own-briquettes video. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqI63IEg3MM&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&border=1]

What is astonishing is how simple the process can be. From converting the vegetable material into charcoal in a regular 55-gallon oil drum, to mixing it with a binding agent (cassava paste, in this case), and then using the most elegantly simple tools to churn out perfect little briquettes. It’s like witnessing the invention of the wheel!

The entire process is very straightforward, although a few steps could use some clarification. For example, we were curious to know why the ultra dark smoke following the ignition of the material in the barrel? Or, why did it flame with a single match following the initial internal combustion? Otherwise, the video is very comprehensive in documenting the process.

We’re eager to learn if you or anyone you know is using this method or interested in implementing something like this!

Our thanks to Amy Smith and D-Lab for sharing this!

Amy Smith/MIT

Speaking at TED a few years ago, Amy Smith, the MIT professor and McArthur Genius Award recipient, made a compelling case for the widespread introduction of simple technologies that could solve major environmental, public health, and poverty problems in developing countries. Her bio on the TED page sums it up best: Invent cheap, low-tech devices that use local resources, so communities can reproduce her efforts and ultimately help themselves. Smith hatches her ideas at D-Lab, the MIT unit responsible for coming up with some of the coolest technological fixes for two thirds of the world’s population.

If her ideas are so beautiful in their simplicity and so relatively inexpensive to deploy, why haven’t they gained traction in the global development agenda? Perhaps it’s scaleability. Fragmented markets. Or penniless consumers.

With the notable exception of mosquito nets and a few clean water pumps, it seems that simple technological fixes that actually save lives do not figure prominently in development assistance budgets. This is odd considering the significant positive impact that, say, fuel efficient stoves and clean burning briquettes can have on poverty alleviation, public health, and environmental degradation.

Our challenge is to turn critical technological innovations into large-scale campaigns that will rival no-brainer solutions like mosquito-nets-to-combat malaria or the rope pump. Because, really, how hard can it be to improve on three stones, and a pot?  Perhaps what’s lacking are the numbers to justify the cost-benefit analysis. We’ll also need some good marketing and communications. Welcome unemployed social marketers! Welcome statisticians, modelers, researchers! Welcome venture philanthropists. Your time has come!

Amy Smith’s ideas deserve more attention and support.

Kim

Charcoal.

You may not think much about it. But if you care about public health, poverty alleviation, and the environment, then it’s a big deal.

Why? Because more than two billion people use wood, charcoal, dung or agricultural resides as primary fuel for their cooking and heating needs, leading to significant health, economic and environmental consequences.

Consider these stats presented by MIT’s Amy Smith:

• Almost 2 million deaths each year are caused by breathing smoke from indoor cooking fires [1]

• Respiratory infections are the leading cause of death of young children worldwide.[2]

• An estimated 50 billion hours are spent collecting firewood each year. That’s as if the entire workforce of the State of California worked full time for a year doing nothing but fetching water! (Not sure exactly how they’d fetch water, but that’s another issue…) [3]

• In some areas where wood and charcoal are scarce, more than a quarter of a family’s income is spent on fuel.

• Charcoal production is an important contributing factor in the deforestation of the tropical belt. Deforestation accounts for about 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the emissions produced by trains, planes, ships, cars, and trucks worldwide. (My note)

The Charcoal Project is a web-based resource that explores the challenges and solutions facing charcoal production and its impacts around the world.

At The Charcoal Project we  want to discuss all aspects of the issue. But we are especially eager to connect individuals and communities on the ground willing to share their experiences producing energy efficient stoves and manufacturing biofuels brickets.

You will also find here stories and ideas that are not directly connect to charcoal production and consumption. For example, we might explore legislative issues, an interesting study, a look at alternative fuels, or even put up a slideshow or video. So please send us content you wish to share!

And thank you for being patient while we build this blog!

J. Kim Chaix

The Charcoal Project

Brooklyn, NY

USA

DISCLAIMER: The Charcoal Project is a private, individual effort and is not affiliated with any institution, government, or company. It is intended as a public service whose purpose is to connect all those interested in this topic. We try to credit all sources of information and welcome our readers to report any errors or oversight. Thank you for supporting us!