[Stoves] Fwd: Air pollution in cities

Thu Nov 23 19:58:57 CST 2017

Crispin:

There is a lot to digest here, which kinda makes a broad point about
biomass balances across contexts and changes over time.

>From planning and project design perspective, having too narrow a focus is
a problem in ignoring some variables, while too wide a vision risks
impossibility of control.

So, here I see many things  - growth in crop waste volumes and fertilizer
needs, possibilities of alternate biomass fuels, use of artificial
wetlands, CO2 fertilization - that are technically exciting; are there
project documents for this Hebei Clean Air Project? Who prepared it?

China has a mixed history of TVEs  - Town and Village Enterprises, perhaps
now as farmer coops - and perhaps what works in China cannot be replicated
elsewhere in terms of scale and unit costs. But I see a significant
external consulting and training market for the CAU and the College of
Engineering.

By the way, yes, there can be competition with subsidies. A large part of
the US economy runs on grants from governments and private charities, but
there is certainly competition in higher education, hospital services,
supermarkets (think food stamps), and of course fee-for-service nonprofits.
Stop worrying about "subsidies" per se. I for one hate the notion that the
rich get subsidies ("clean" energy, "clean" fuels) and the poor suffer the
"markets" such as may exist.

Nikhil

Begin forwarded message:

*From:* Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
*Date:* November 22, 2017 at 10:41:44 AM EST
*To:* Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
*Subject:* *Re: [Stoves] Air pollution in cities*
*Reply-To:* Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <
stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>

Dear Friends

Tom sez:

>Fuel supply and pelleting businesses are organized at the county level as
farmer coops. Crop residues (rice and maize) are only processed to pellets
during the harvest season so that any businesses that were not organized by
October probably missed this season.

One of topics investigated as part of the Hebei Clean Air Project was the
production of biogas and the mixing and making of fertilizers based on crop
residues. A huge amount of investigative work on how this can be done
effectively, maximising energy content in the biogas, for example, and the
use of artificial wetlands for water purification (etc etc) has been done
by the China Agricultural University (CAU). There is a section of the
College of Engineering devoted to this and they have recently expanded
their graduate programme so such an extent that there are not 6 student
desks permanently in the office of Prof Dong. I think they have about 35
Masters students working on these matters at any one time.

My point is that the topics are taken seriously and ‘at scale’. The linkage
between CAU and fertilizers and the province Hebei is that biogas is
important, CAU is the lead lab for this, and biochar is a ‘tax’ on biogas.
You can’t have everything. The question of what to make and how much it
costs is dominated by the seasonal availability of the input materials.
Fertilizer is pretty easy to store. Gas is not, neither is the input
material.

In Hebei there are multiple plants making fertilizers but surprisingly (to
me anyway) it is not used locally, meaning inside the province. The reason
is economic. Nearby provinces have subsidies for ‘organic’ fertilizers and
the difference makes it worth shipping Hebei’s production of biochar (or
not) based fertilizers to other provinces. Because of the availability of
additional raw material (which is typically burned illegally in
mid-October) that is not making it into the gas (A) or fertilizer (B)
system, I suggested that the obvious best use of the available material was
A or B but not burning. (I am not putting pellets in there because they are
not economically viable at the moment and all production is still
subsidised – or was the last time I saw a presentation on it. Equipment
issues are major.)

The basic problem was the cost of gathering the material. It has to have a
value to the farmers if it involves work. Typically all the pellet and
other production relies on the delivery of the input material to the
factory gate. The economics of the enterprise start at their own gate with
a cost of the delivered inputs.

>The product is sold at competitive prices, and the yields improve so it is
a live business model.

Well, in the case of the fertilizers, it is sold at competitive prices, but
the buying is subsidised. Hebei producers can get more money selling
outside the province, so they do. Is selling at an inflated price because
someone is offering a subsidy ‘competitive’? Mileage may vary.

>We saw pictures of the crops and data from many of the tests sites in
other areas. They have been very practical and creative in the development
of commercial biochar fertilizers.

I think this aspect of Chinese agriculture is underestimated by those
outside who don’t see the work close-up. We can talk freely about how this
or that ‘solution’ will bring benefit x or y, but in a real world of
constraints, there are multiple competing solutions on the go.

Carbon and hydrogen are energy sources, and that is in no way limited to
thermal energy. In the past 100 years gross biomass production has risen
14-20% depending on species because of increased CO2 fertilization. If
Hebei sends out more than say, 18% of its gross carbon-containing materials
in the form of biochar or other fertilizer, or sells it as gas, then their
net provincial stock of soil carbon will drop. They have two options:
either buy it back (offer the same subsidy in-province) or take more from
the air. To get more from there air there has to be more in the air. If
carbon sequestration is successful at scale and returns the planet to the
pre-industrial level, which was almost a 4.5 billion year historical low,
gross food production of the 4 key species (wheat, rice, maize and
soybeans) would drop 18%1. If it was dropped (accidentally or deliberately)
to the glacial era level food production would drop 51% because all plants
would be on the verge of starvation (plants evolved and first thrived in an
atmosphere with 2000-3000 ppm CO2).

We apparently have the luxury of postulating what could be done with
biomass and char and stoves and lots of cool things. Those working at the
cutting edge, so to speak, have to face the inevitable limits of the system
where there is only so much carbon and so much hydrogen and so much solar
energy. The first thing to do is to stop burning it wastefully in the
field.

I think India will soon reach the same level of understanding and action
and China.

Regards
Crispin

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott

Key Lab of Clean Production and Utilization of Renewable Energy, Ministry
of Agriculture, P. R. China

China Agricultural University

--------------

1  “The USGCRP and the UN disregard these practical finding in their
academic claims that carbon dioxide-caused global warming will cause mass
famine, etc. The writers at *CO2 Science* disagree. They reviewed a paper
by L. Mariani in *The European Physical Journal Plus* titled “How to Feed
the Planet and Its Additional 1.5 Billion Persons 30 Years from Now.” Given
how far-fetched the academic forecasts of the UN and the USGCRP are
compared to actual events, it is worth quoting a few comments at length.

*“ “As illustrated in the figure below, Mariani notes that a ‘return to a
glacial period would reduce by 51% the global productivity for thermal (low
temperatures) and nutritional (low levels of CO2) reasons,’ whereas a
return to pre-industrial conditions would reduce global production of the
four keystone crops by 18 percent. Looking to the future, however, Mariani
notes that increases in both CO2 and temperature would improve production,
increasing the combined production of wheat, maize, rice and soybean by 15
and 24 percent above today’s values.”*

“ *“Commenting on his findings and looking to the past, Mariani writes that
‘the return of temperature and CO2 to glacial or pre-industrial values
would give rise to serious disadvantages for food security and should be as
far as possible avoided, as also highlighted by the results of Cage and
Coleman (2001) and Araus et al. (2003). And with an eye to the future,
Mariani says that ‘the agricultural sector is able to successfully meet the
challenge of global change and guarantee food security to levels higher
than the current ones for a world population that in 2050 will exceed 9
billion people,’ to which we would add — only if governments avoid
implementing CO2 emission reduction schemes, which schemes are appearing
more and more to be akin to genocide.”*”

Carbon plants nutrition and global food security
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/i2017-11337-8>

How to Feed the Planet and Its Additional 1.5 Billion Persons 30 Years from
Now <http://www.co2science.org/articles/V20/nov/a8.php> which discusses the
paper.

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