[Stoves] Could barbecues help fight climate change?

[Lloyd Helferty]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/oct/21/barbecues-climate-change
October 21, 2010

Durwood Zaelke's emergency plan for tackling climate change ranges from 
the Montreal protocol to carbon-negative barbecues

Barbecues that remove CO2 from the air could play a role in the fight 
against climate change according to Durwood Zaelke, a leading expert on 
rapid responses to global warming.

This year's outdoor cooking season might be over, but Zaelke suggested 
at last week's 10:10 talk that from next summer consumers should start 
demanding barbecues that do their bit for the planet by generating 
rather than consuming charcoal – or biochar.

Zaelke's idea is based on a stove designed for use in the developing 
world by Rob Flanagan. The stove creates heat by turning wood or other 
biomass into charcoal, a process that releases combustible gases.

Once the cooking is over, most of the carbon from the fuel remains in 
the stove in the form of charcoal. This can then be mixed in with soil, 
a process that sequesters the carbon for thousands of years and boosts 
crop productivity.

... But whatever we do with non-CO2 gases, Zaelke says, we also urgently 
need not just to reduce carbon dioxide, but to get to a point as soon as 
possible where the world becomes carbon negative, with humans 
sequestering more CO2 than we release. "That might sound crazy," he 
says, "but we could do it".

The biochar barbecue idea is, I guess, really just a way for Zaelke to 
remind us that there are various techniques – on big and small scales – 
that we could use to suck CO2 out of the air.

-- 

   Lloyd Helferty, Engineering Technologist
   Principal, Biochar Consulting (Canada)
   www.biochar-consulting.ca
   603-48 Suncrest Blvd, Thornhill, ON, Canada
   905-707-8754; 647-886-8754 (cell)
      Skype: lloyd.helferty
   Steering Committee member, Canadian Biochar Initiative
   President, Co-founder&  CBI Liaison, Biochar-Ontario
     Advisory Committee Member, IBI
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