[Stoves] Fwd: Women's empowerment

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

The last I checked, Goldman Sachs is out of cookstoves deals they were so
enthusiastic about BC (Before Clinton).

1. The future of CDM is anybody's guess. Will post some items if/when we
return to that subject.
2. Subsidies are always in play. Governments need to show they spend money
for people. How to spend wisely - as someone put it, "separating weak
claims from weak claimants"- is the central problem of public budgeting.
3. Every generation has its techno-dreamers. Some dreams come true. Always.

Nikhil



On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 1:21 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Ron and All TLUD char-bury-iers
>
> I think you have to get a grip on the scale of what is possible in the
> short term, and what is impossible.
>
> I am working on reducing the amount of coal consumed by some 400m people
> in Eurasia. Using off the shaft technology locally manufactured, it is
> pretty easy to reduce the consumption of coal, and of course CO2. It will
> not require any carbon finance at all. This reduction can be compared with
> burying char for 'carbon negativity'. Reducing emissions is no different
> from burying char in terms of the 'carbon budget' which the most recent
> paper examining it says is twice what it was thought to be. That reduces
> the problem by half before we even start to calculate.
>
> So, how many cooking stoves producing 400 g of subsidised char per day
> would be the equivalent of a coal consumption reduction being achieved
> already? Can you guess?
>
> More than 6,000,000,000. So...that is not going to happen because there
> aren't that many kitchens in the world.
>
> CDM carbon finance is only available for reducing the use of unsustainably
> ‎harvested biomass. Suppose half of it is unsustainably harvested. Taking
> as much or more will *increase* the harvest in many cases because that
> old Three Stone baseline is rapidly disappearing. ‎ You are competing
> against improved stoves, not three stones.
>
> If you try to sell the 'improved fertility' argument, you are competing
> against CO2 fertilization which has increased all biomass production
> globally by about 11% since 1980. Someone can correct that number if they
> like. It might be more.
>
> Why should we pay to improve soil fertility with stove char if a greater
> system-wide effect can be achieved for free?
>
> I think you need a macro-plan what has no subsidies in it.
>
> With 243m people in China burning coal at home, we are better off saving
> them $12 each per year than trying to pay the rural population of Nepal to
> bury their charcoal. To Nepalis it is fuel for those stoves that pregnant
> women sit on to keep warm. Saving rural Chinese RMB10bn per year in fuel
> purchases is a better option.
>
> I realise Goldman Sachs will be disappointed because there won't be any
> commissions.
> Crispin
>
>
>
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