[Stoves] Replies re illegalities and benefits of char.

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Ron

I have only retained things not covered before, or which ther is no point discussing like whether or not I use the word climate in my posts.

[big snip]

RWL:   Time limitations preclude my answering the above individually.  I repeat only that Crispin's views on climate seem to preclude his appreciating charcoal as the main future means of taking carbon out of the atmosphere.  

I have yet to see another method as slow and as ineffective at removing carbon from the atmosphere. I wonder if perhaps you have overlooked the current (lousy) charcoal production methods as a means of creating biochar. When making charcoal in a pit, a large percentage of the char is lost to fines which remain in the ground. I have heard different figures cited, but it is certainly on the order of 30% in the forest. Cecil says the total losses in the whole process from tree to stove are huge. Most of the loss ends up in the soil (sequestered). If you take a systems approach, this soil amendment will have to be subtracted from any char that comes via the method of involving a char-producing stove. It would be interesting to see what net effect changing from a forest-produced charcoal to a stove-produced char would make to the total sequestration.

>>Everyone complains about the disappearance of trees and no one does much practical to replace them even though it has been known for quite a while that trees can be replanted. The story of community managed forestry is not very encouraging though I remain convinced that it is the long term solution, as the Brits found out in the 1500’s.

 >[RWL3a:  I agree that Crispin has stated the problem correctly - not enough forests.  But I think he has not answered my question.  I think the correct answer is that charcoal-making as presently practiced is NOT great for the economy - and plenty of reason to outlaw illegal production.  Loss of biodiversity leads to loss of tourism dollars.  More money expended for (climate-harming) fossil fuels, etc.   More below on this topic.

Unfortunately for your argument, not all charcoal is created equal. In all forests there are forest fires. In South Africa it is expected there will be a % of forest burn per year from lightning and so on. All the damaged trees that are too burned to be harvested for lumber are turned into charcoal. I perceive the anti-charcoal arguments to be so severe as to be opposed to the entire idea of charcoal as a fuel, at all. It is a ridiculous position. Charcoal cam be made from many things and is a very good, high energy, transportable fuel. Transport is almost entirely by fossil fuels. Charcoal uses less per MJ delivered than wood. Or pellets. Or briquettes. Or any other raw biomass.

>>Rural people are ‘an externality’ in terms of food pricing, dumping practices, unfair global trade rules and pro-urban political pressures. City people are not automatically better or more deserving people. Why are they there? They have been driven off the land because it is hopelessly uneconomic to remain there in miserable rural poverty. Many political parties encourage this because they see the future of humanity as urban. The more cynical say they do it because they are easier to control in the cities. The urban poor (our target market) are ‘an externality’ of the failure to address the needs of the rural masses. Promoting the further diminution of the rural economy is not going to help anyone.

[RWL:  Rural people (nor urban) are not an externality by any economic definition I have seen.   

I meant that rural people are collateral damage. Their interests are not served by urban-focused programmes.

>…These externality factors are considered by many to be an important part in deciding whether $150/ton for illegal char is a good deal.  Maybe one solution is for Gambia to put a tax on - doubling the !50 probably is not enough, but would probably swing a lot of users to pyrolyzing stoves.

It seems you think that taxing things will cause change. Poor people cannot afford to pay double for their energy. If pushed, they would avoid pyrolysing stoves and find one that will burn all the fuel they can find, 100%.

>A friend of mine (not Cecil) said he saw charcoal production 150 metres from the office (in Banjul) responsible for preventing charcoal production in the Gambia. Banning something usually means the price goes up, not that it is actually banned. It is banned because of pressure from outsiders who believe that making something illegal will produce a different outcome for the forest without having to address the need to change people’s attitude to the law. There are PV solar electric feed-in tariffs in Germany but not in Italy for the same reason.

     [RWL:  Re the 1st sentence - I know I can find a stolen new tape recorder in Denver for a lower price than one from an honest store.   The second sentence doesn't follow from anything - of course laws have to be enforced  AND we have to change peoples attitudes.  

You are missing the point of what happens in a country where laws are treated with scorn and abandon. Announcing that there will be no more ‘bottle store licenses’ does not mean there will be no more licenses, it means the price of getting one has gone up.

>But the main thing we have to do is provide a better honest means of livelihood.  Biochar can do that - and the payment needs to come from developed countries - to developing countries.  

Why do you think the payments will make it to the bottom of the pyramid? In Nigeria and Angola there are billions of $ coming in from oil, basically nothing of which benefits the poor whose resource it ultimately is. Carbon trading money will go to the middlemen, the traders and speculators, administrators and certification crews.

>I doubt there are many developing countries opposed to me paying for their help in removing excess atmospheric carbon - whil improving soils and lifelihoods  (oops - that was my next sentence).

 Define ‘excess atmospheric carbon’.

>Re second - I gather this means you think the problem is insolvable.  I disagree.  About what should we "Think"?

You can’t solve a complex energy problem involving a majority of  a poor population by passing a law that will cause them financial suffering. It will be ignored.

>Those places which tried managed forestry have a spotty record, and I think there is a big future in it. It would be more efficient to turn some of the forest into char for local agriculture and to ship whole or processed fuel to the cities.

> [RWL:   Case closed.  I don't know what we have been arguing about.  (Except I want to be paying for this through a fund you don't believe is needed.)]

I believe it is not needed and would be pointless and wasteful to establish and administer, certify and audit.

 >The same tree used as wood can probably cook for 4 to 5 times as many people (I have seen the number 7).  And the properly managed tree (and its roots) will not be savaged - but rather coppiced.

>…I suggested a loss of 2/3 the energy when char is made in a pit (a loss factor of 3) - what is your estimate?    Same question for stove efficiency comparison (factor of 2?). 

     I don't understand any part of the last "partial equations - holistic" sentence.]

 I think I treated this separately.

>I take it then you are not against charcoal in general? Would you make trade in TLUD-stove char legal? That would be like legalizing elephant ivory if the elephant died of natural causes. When caught with tusks, people will claim the elephant died of ‘natural causes’, to wit, ‘lead poisoning’. It was a mistake to ban charcoal production, when they really wanted to ban tree cutting. There is a big difference. Perhaps we should lobby for the lifting of the charcoal making ban and ban tree cutting. No? Wouldn’t work? People would cut trees anyway? Quell surprise. The solution is planting and managing, not banning. It is a supply-side production problem, not an energy shortage problem. Running out of energy does not change the nature of the cause of the problem. It is secondarily an energy efficiency problem. By that I mean there is a demand-side partial solution to supply-side problem.

>[RWL:  I hope list members realize the first part are not serious questions for me.  Yes I would make trade in char headed for the ground legal (not limited to TLUDs), but it would have to have had a productive use of the pyrolysis gases, and certainly woul have to have demonstrated that the resource was legal.   And yes, we can control that trade - because my tax dollars are going to be insisting on it - and because we can track where it went (Char is highly recalcitrant).  The (tiny) Biochar industry is all over thiscertification topic - there must be accountability.  

 > After "Quell surprise" some agreement.  But I see it as not just both energy supply and demand, but also issues/reasons favoring char in the ground - both climate and soil issues/reasons.  The beauty of Biochar is different from every other carbon sequestration approach - it provides out-year benefits, including increasing (not decreasing) energy benefits.  Putting CO2 underground CCS and BECS)  is failing  - for cost and legal reasons - but it provides only costs, no benefits.  Biochar is a totally unique "animal" - and charcoal-making stoves are key to getting started down these terribly important (for energy, climate, and soil) reasons

I think it will be important for your argument in favour of biochar stoves to examine the actual amount of carbon sequestered by the current pit-method of charcoal making (traditional pits) because it is large – as much as 50% of the mass of the tree. The amount of char reported by Cecil (who investigated Mozambique charcoal production for ProBEC) is larger than the amounts you are reporting to be able to sequester using stoves (20-25%, right). It is likely that no one thought of this aspect when proposing that stoves will put more carbon into the soil than whole wood burning stoves or traditional charcoal stoves. This is what I mean by using partial argument and making holistic claims. The partial statement that char-producing stoves can generate sequesterable carbon has been extended to a general claim that this will provide a net carbon-in-soil benefit. Yet the amount of carbon being left in the ground during charcoal production – decried by many as an energy ‘loss’ has not been accounted in your calculations. If that charcoal is a loss, why is not the char from pyrolysing stoves a loss too? It is all char in the ground, in the end. No difference, save that the forest pit method put more total carbon in the ground, and saves all that (fossil fuel) transport cost.

Re the energy lost: the calculation has to take into consideration the difference in thermal efficiency of the cooking products. I have been over that in detail before.

>>Joyfully, the stoves that burn most efficiently also produce the least PM and CO! I see all the elements of a win-win-win-win solution: faster, cleaner cooking, renewable energy self-sufficiency, rural employment and improving agriculture. Proposals dealing with these complex issues should include the whole energy equation.

 >[RWL:  I agree (with surprise) with this closing - with two additions.  Stove and all energy proposals should deal with more than energy (meaning also climate and soils).  I also think you are saying that a char-making stove beats other stoves in being faster, cleaner, employment, etc .  Thanks to Paul Anderson for emphasizing these additional benefits - much of which is due to your own comments.  Tell us if I am reading that wrong.    Ron]

You should not be surprised at all. We agree on nearly everything in principle to do with stoves. It is unfortunate that the ‘climate issues’ are continuously brought into the discussion because very few people have read enough to be able to discuss it coherently and comprehensively. Are our carbon dioxide emissions going to roast our grandchildren in their cots? Even the people are the very core of the AGW message machine know it is not so. Everyone should read this. http://www.assassinationscience.com/climategate/  You won’t know the players without a programme.

Think about what I said about the char in the forest pits: the proposal will put an end to that ‘waste’. I don’t think the pyrolysing stoves can more than make up for it.

Regards

Crispin

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20110817/353ae509/attachment.html>