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.
We welcome and encourage utilization of the toolkit by Peace Corps Volunteers and staff globally. We have designed this toolkit so we can share Peace Corps developed resources both globally and regionally. Furthermore, we have selected, and will continue to expand our selection of resources from our partner agencies that we think are most appropriate for staff and Volunteers.
Jumaa, charcoal retailer, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
We just couldn’t resist preempting Steve Jobs‘ announcement of the next hot Apple gadget with our own launch today, the world’s first:
Steve Jobs, Apple Inc. California
Global Biomass Index
As we indicated before, the index will track the price of biomass and related fuels around the world.
The Charcoal Project Global Biomass Index
The tool is a work in progress and you can expect to see greater functionality with each new version.
Ultimately, however, the index will only succeed if you help us by contributing information from wherever you are.
You can email your data to: index[at]charcoalproject[dot]org
Please make certain you contribute at least the fields in red!
Location: (Province, district, town, city, etc. Multiple locations are encouraged!)
Country:
Date:
Type of biomass: (Please be as descriptive as possible, ie: heavy/light charchoal, briquettes type, wood type, etc.)
Local unit of measure: (kg, sack, pound, coffee can, jug, etc. Please be as descriptive or aproximative as possible as the units will be standardized later.)
Price in local currency: (Is the price wholesale or retail?)
Conversion rate of local currency to Euros & USD: (We can do this on our end if you don’t know. Click here for Google’s handy online converter.)
Information about alternative fuel of choice, if available: (Charcoal vs LPG, or charcoal vs woodfuel, or charcoal vs briquettes, or briquettes vs LPG, or charcoal vs kerosene, you get the idea…)
Unit of measure: (100lbs cylinder of LPG, for example, or one gallon/liter of kerosene, etc.)
Local cost of alternative fuel per unit of measure:
Person or organization submitting and email. (Emails will be kept confidential and will only be used for corroborating information)
As always, we welcome your suggestions as to how we can make this resource more useful to the end user.
A very special thank you to Christina, our Chief Technology Goddess, for making this happen!
And thank you for supporting The Charcoal Project in our effort to build the global network of biomass energy stakeholders.
— The team at The Charcoal Project
This table shows only some of the categories tracked by the index.
Subject: USAID RFA – Supportive Environments for Healthy Households and Communities
Dear PCIA Partners,
Please see below for a recently released global Request for Application (RFA) from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that may be of interest. Approximately 20 percent of the proposed work will focus on indoor air quality. The RFA lists “increased use of alternatives to cooking with biomass fuels using traditional stoves and/or increased use of housing improvements to improve indoor air quality” as a key environmental health intervention.
Best regards,
The PCIA Coordination Team
———-
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) seeks to award a five-year $100 million Cooperative Agreement, Supportive Environments for Healthy Households and Communities. This activity will support the further development, introduction, and delivery of high-impact interventions in the areas of water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and indoor air quality. The activity, will support USAID programs in achieving public health impact by improvements in key behaviors and environmental conditions.
For more information and to download the full text of the RFA, see:
http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do?mode=VIEW&oppId=55298
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
