Posts Tagged ‘regulation’
OPINION
World Energy Consumption: 1989 - 1991
BP, the US Congress, and the White House don’t know this yet, but we think the Macondo gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is going to help put better cookstoves, fuels, and policies in the pots of the world’s 3 billion energy-poor households.
The boldness of the assertion should be clearer after President Obama’s Oval Office address tonight at 8 PM (ET, GMT – 4), where he is expected to announce ambitious plans to reduce American dependence on foreign oil and increased energy efficiency standards.
Environment and policy experts say the US Congress is likely to take up sweeping energy legislation before the year is out. A legislative debate in America around energy efficiency offers the best chance to draw attention to the plight of the world’s energy poor.
So, for all those of us concerned with the 2 million people that die each year from indoor air pollution, the unsustainable harvesting of wood for biomass energy, the loss of habitat for endangered species, and climate change, this may represent our best chance to draw much needed attention to this very real problem and its eminently practical solutions.
March 17th, 2010 – USAID/IAP Updates – Black carbon soot, produced from incomplete combustion of diesel fuel and biomass, is one of the largest contributors to climate change apart from CO2 and should be a prime target of policymakers according to scientists and experts testifying at today’s hearing of the US House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming chaired by Congressman Edward Markey
“Black carbon packs a powerful punch when it comes to climate change, absorbing solar radiation while in the atmosphere and also darkening the surfaces of snow and ice, contributing to increased melting in vulnerable regions such as the Arctic and Himalayas,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD). “The good news is that it only stays in the atmosphere for up to a few weeks, making it an ideal target for achieving fast cooling through aggressive mitigation measures.”
Reducing black carbon emissions and other short-term climate forcers such as HFCs, methane, and tropospheric ozone can serve as a complement to CO2 reduction measures, which can take up to 1,000 years to produce significant cooling because of CO2’s long atmospheric lifetime. (Read more)
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
… or think before you stove.
Terrace cultivation and the barren hills of Yunnan.
With its clinical, scientific approach to environmental conservation, it determined that the growing pressure on the dwindling vegetation constituted a major stress to the region’s unique environment. The signs were clear: woodfuel collection alone contributed to the loss of 300,000 acres of forest each year.
And, so, a stove project was born. Funds were raised, stove designs were selected, a distribution network was established. Stove were handed out. Targets were met.
Things began to unravel when the project managers discovered that the households were not adopting the stoves as planned. They were instead being cast out of the house. Cue the anthropologist, who discovered that project managers had overlooked a critical cultural factor: the sacred significance of a permanent, visible open flame in the home. A simple fix solved the problem.
Teaching the local population how to use the stove.
This story ended well and to date almost 20,000 stoves and other energy efficient appliances have been distributed in the region.
Stepping in the carcasses of stove projects
But what about all the other abandoned stove projects that litter the world? How much money have donors invested in ill-conceived stove designs, poorly executed marketing campaigns, and lack of investment in capacity building?
I raise this question because my recent conversation with Andree Sosler of the Darfur Stove Project forced me to rethink one of my cherished assumptions: that local stove production was the only way to go. My assumption was that locally produced stoves generated buy-in, jobs, and new markets for a locally produced good. (Read the end of story to find out why I was wrong.)
Learning is never ending
Pondering my own misconception, I realized that there is probably a lot of aggregate and valuable knowledge out there from all the failed stove projects around the world. But how do these lessons get shared and re-applied? How do the wise men and women in the bioenergy community learn from other people’s mistakes? We need to think about this if we’re serious about tackling large-scale energy poverty relief through the adoption of energy efficient stoves, kilns, and briquettes.
I found some answers in a thoughtful paper on why the Improved Charcoal Stove (ICS) project in Tanzania failed to catch on in the late 90s. The paper reveals a number of major flaws in the project. Here are some of the highlights.
Capacity Training
“Of more than the 1000 artisans trained to build the Kenyan-adapted jiko stove, some among the group were taught only how to build a part of the stove, not the entire contraption. “In addition, others learned via apprenticeships or by simply copying designs, which leads to products of variable quality. The problem of having poor quality stoves on the market is a persistent one, and has ‘tarnished the image’ of the ICS.”
Materials and standards
In addition to the insufficient training, the report identifies several other reasons for the failure, including, “First, the quality of materials cannot be reliably obtained. For example, rice husks ash is a necessary input for a stove, but there is not a formal market for it, so producers must depend upon personal relations with ginnery operators. Second, many producers lack sufficient capital to purchase the appropriate materials, and therefore they substitute materials of lower quality. Third, there is not an agreement even among the most experienced producers on the established standards for a stove.”
The Market
Financially, it appeared that the cost of production and the cost of the units to households made it difficult for a producer to reconcile cost and expenses.
Institutional support
In the Institutional category, the report cites the “lack of a coordinated source of information about stove design, materials, training, and marketing of the products. The report recommended the establishment of an information center to meet this need.”
Policy void
Under the Policy rubric, the report identifies “the inability to obtain approved production sites for small-scale production is one of the most significant barriers that face ICS producers. There is no procedure for allocating small plots of businesses, and thus many ICS producers remain informal despite having business licenses. This creates instability and hinders the sector’s development.”
Barefoot and in the kitchen. Not!
Finally, in probing the challenges of scaling up the project, the report points to the absence of women in the marketing and production process. “The reported noted that women have not been actively involved in the promotion of the stoves, but since women are the primary users, their involvement is critical.”
Courtesy of Envirofit
Part of the reason why I felt compelled to write this post is because of Haiti, where the recent tragedy has unleashed a rush of programs to bring energy efficiency to the country’s devastated population.
We hope they are all well thought out and executed.
Kim
Photo via Wildlife Direct
A dispatch from Kenya this morning made me wonder if efforts to ban the charcoal trade in various African countries is at all effective. Can it be enforced? Who suffers? Has this strategy yielded results somewhere? I don’t know.
What is clear is that the pace of decimation of African forests for charcoal and woodfuel is rapidly reaching crisis point in various countries — Uganda, Malawi, parts of Kenya and Tanzania.
Excerpts from news dispatches help paint a picture.
From the article mentioned earlier, reported by Wildlife Direct:
“According to Elias Kimaru of the Kwale landscape project of the WWF in the area more than 3,000 bags of charcoal are getting out of the area on daily basis to supply Mombasa and Nairobi. “It is also believed that some charcoal is being exported to Middle East.” Kimaru told WildlifeDirect. Is African charcoal really being exported to the Middle East? Does anyone know?
“Most charcoal bags weigh 50 kgs (heavy charcoal from indigenous trees). Probably hardwood. “Taking the rate of conversion from wood to charcoal to be 10%, we are talking of more than 1500 tonnes of woods is being converted from trees to charcoal daily”, adds Kimaru Is there a formula to convert this to standing trees? I realize there is no “standard” tree but perhaps there exists one for actuary purposes.
“According to Kimaru, most of these trees are harvested from private ranches and county council land (unprotected public land).” Although not directly related, the ongoing battle between settlers of the Mau forest and the government’s decision to evict them comes to mind.
From an IPS news service article:
“The World Bank estimates that one million tonnes of charcoal are consumed in Tanzania each year, roughly half of this in the capital, Dar es Salaam. Juma is part of a small business collective whose members put their money together to purchase charcoal – often illegally produced – by suppliers far outside Dar es Salaam.
“Press reports on illegal timber exports and growing awareness of deforestation led government to impose a total ban on charcoal in 2006. A March 2009 study of charcoal use in Tanzania by the World Bank says the ban’s only impact was to deprive the government of revenue from licensing production while brisk trade carried on illegally. It sounds like the WB is not too keen on charcoal bans. Prices for charcoal went up – and stayed up – as did corruption of officials.
“The ban lasted only two weeks.
“The goverment’s search for more effective action is complicated because responsibility falls between various ministries. Policies on better management of forests have been put in place; taxes on gas and the cylinders it’s sold in have been lifted, with limited effect.
“The World Bank study’s recommendations begin with improving how government taxes on charcoal are collected. The authors call for fees to be collected as the fuel is transported, instead of attempting to license tens of thousands of small producers on-site; more of this revenue should be left at the district level, where it should be spent on reducing forest degradation through community-based management and training charcoal producers on more efficient techniques.
“At the other end of the chain, more efficient stoves would reduce demand while saving poor households money; and affordable alternatives to charcoal, such as ethanol gels or briquettes pressed out waste materials like sawdust should be supported.
“The failure of the ban illustrates how any policy combination will have to be thought through with care. The charcoal industry generates an estimated 650 million dollars a year, employing hundreds of thousands of people, as producers, transporters, artisans who manufacture charcoal stoves, and retailers like the Jumas.”
And finally this, from our friend Emmanuel de Merode, Chief Warden of Virunga National Park in the DRC.
Emmanuel de Merode
“Follow the trail of charcoal,” Emmanuel de Merode had said at the WildlifeDirect office. “Charcoal is the biggest threat to the park.”
Charcoal, as we discover over the next few days, is the main source of energy, and evil, in North Kivu. Charcoal is used by 98 percent of the households for cooking, boiling water to make it potable, and also for heat. In the city of Goma, a constant pall of charcoal smoke smudges out the sun and makes the rough streets, rumpled with hardened lava from the 2002 eruption of Nyiragongo, appear to be pathways to hell.
Hardwood charcoal is the economic prize in the DRC and it comes from old growth hard wood trees found within Virunga National Park — home to half the world’s population of mountain gorillas.
A sack of charcoal sells for $25 on average. Doing the math De Merode estimates that in 2006, when gorilla tourism brought in less than $300,000, the Virunga charcoal industry was worth more than $30 million.
It is estimated that at the rate that charcoal is harvested from the park, the entire southern portion of the park will be gone in ten years. An area considered to be perhaps the most biologically diverse and best of its kind, may soon vanish.
Aware of these facts, and the local implications, neighboring Rwanda has banished the internal production of charcoal. However, this approach does nothing to mitigate Rwanda’s own internal demand for the product. They just buy it from the Congolese.
