[Stoves] Darfur carbon

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Friends

 

The project described at 


http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/01/22/carbon-finance-plays-its-part-
in-empowering-women-and-saving-lives/

discusses the LPG project in Darfur that has received Carbon Financing. Two
things stand out in this, the first being the cost of getting gas to people
over a long road. Our recent investigations into the use patterns for LPG in
Indonesia (where similar transport issues arise in no small part because
they have more than 10,000 islands) which shows that while cooking is
universally done by 'we cook with LPG' households, they still use biomass to
heat water.  This has led to a new class of stove called 'water heaters'
which are intended to be much higher in efficiency than a cooking stove and
which need fewer features like a good turn down ratio. Let's keep an eye on
that space.

Second, it is noted in the beginning of the article that for every ten trees
cut down, only 2 are planted. This demonstrates that the fuel supply is not
impacted by cooking only, it is impacted by poor resource management and the
long term cure is to plant 3 trees for every one cut, as is the norm in
Western Canada. 

It is also worth noting that the calculation of support for this
(subsidised) biomass-to-LPG switch is calculate on the GWP (global warming
potential) of CO2. The IPCC has recently cut the estimated GWP to half of
their former estimate but it still remains about double the range given in
most of the papers published in the past 12 months. 

This reduction cuts the funding potential for the project in half.
Developers of such projects must keep an eye on how this market is
developing and trending. Wherever possible, make sure your projects are
viable without such funding. Where that is not possible, make sure the
contract is not depending on a 'market price' ie make it a contract at a
fixed price and assume that when it is over, there will be no carry-on
obligations based on a future unknown price. In other words, use the money
for seed funding of a viable enterprise. 

A good example of that would be the establishment of reforestation projects
in the Darfur region where unsustainable harvesting has been going on for
decades. As the Chadian example of local management of the resource has
shown, this is quite possible if the permissions and regulation are in the
right hands. Putting control in the 'wrong hands' or making the charcoal
business illegal always leads to disaster as no one stands to legally
benefit from the proper management of the resources.

Regards

Crispin

 

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