[Stoves] Carbon management - one of several new metrics

[Jock Gill]

Teddy,

You are asking a very good questions.  What is the impact of the production of 100 million stoves?  Is there a cradle to cradle plan for them?  What is the carbon management strategy for them over their entire life cycle?  This is one reason I advocate for making stoves out of locally available materials.  This implies local construction which implies local economic activity.  This ends up with an edge based strategy empowering local peoples yet leveraging their capital, human and financial, in order to get the job done.  I still maintain that there is not enough political will to fund 100 million stoves from centralized and remote sources of capital, private or governmental.

As for charcoal, for my part, I am talking about the local stove user making charcoal, not burning charcoal.

Another question is what are the consequences of traditional methods of making charcoal?  The thermal energy is wasted?  Transportation?  Deforestation?  Do such questions suggest benefits for making charcoal while cooking rather than combusting charcoal to cook?

What is the cumulative, life time, effect of 100 million stoves burning charcoal made in the "traditional" manner?  Can we develop a carbon strategy for stoves that is more in the direction of regenerative stweardship?

Very curious.

Jock

Jock Gill
P.O. Box 3
Peacham,  VT 05862

Cell: (617) 449-8111

google.com/+JockGill

:> Extract CO2 from the atmosphere! <:

Via iPad

> On Apr 4, 2014, at 5:20 AM, Cookswell Jikos <cookswelljikos at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Jock and Crispin - 
> 
> This is a very interesting read, I just had a recent very interesting experience with value addition of charcoal in a rural town in Kenya. A lady recently bought a large oven to roast chickens at her restaurant in Bomet town - she reckons that she can cook 20 whole roast chickens using about 40ksh of charcoal (2bob per bird)....chickens are 400ksh raw and she sells them for 950ksh roasted!
> 
> I just have a couple of questions that came to mind from the above correspondence - with the char - do you typically mean lumpwood charcoal or chardust? 
> 
> Also from a systems analysis side of looking at this 'seed-to-ash' cycle of biomass energy - do you know of any literature or experiences that discuss the full life cycle analysis of making and distributing cookstoves...of which I specifically wonder about the manufacturing process - the raw materials, energy sources, machines (you may enjoy this fascinating article on  from lowtechmag.com how-sustainable-is-digital-fabrication)  and the buildings' carbon and environmental impacts. And then eventually calculating the the cost of final decommissioning of the cookstoves. (i.e. if the GACC goal of 100 million units at say even 100gm of metal per stove -i can be a big undertaking).
> 
> How much of a concern do you feel these slightly abstract aspects of cookstove dissemination actually are against the larger immediate problem of IAP and energy inefficiency. Is it simply a case of broken eggs to make an omelette or is there some potential for a LEED type of certification for cookstove manufacturers who use sustainable design in their production process? After all if making a million stoves seriously pollutes a river in China (well even more..) a openpit mine in Australia and the air everywhere, does this not raise a case for looking into reducing these impacts? 
> 
> Many thanks and hope to hear your thoughts on this matter. 
> 
> Teddy 
> 
> Cookswell Jikos
> www.cookswell.co.ke
> www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos
> www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com
> Mobile: +254 700 380 009 
> Mobile: +254 700 905 913
> P.O. Box 1433, Nairobi 00606, Kenya
> 
> Save trees - think twice before printing.
> 
> 
> 
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