[Stoves] Carbon offsets and charcoal (Re: Crispin on Rwanda)

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

Re: your claim about Rwanda:  "in a period of only a few years, the sector
has modernised to such an extent that all charcoal is now produced from
sustainable sources, none of it from original forest reserves."

How close -in kilometers - does charcoal have to be produced in order to be
claimed "from sustainable sources" or "sustainably ‎sourced"? Who sets
these boundaries and why or how?

If mature forests are destroyed for timber or mining or road/real estate
construction but dead trees on one's backyard are used for making charcoal,
whose "sustainability" is threatened and how?

>From what I remember, "original forest reserves" in Rwanda were
concentrated in some areas and that much of those reserves were mined out
because of mining activities and the post-genocide mass killings on the way
to then-Zaire. I forget the details but the claim "only a few years" is
subject to interpretations; a giz-commissioned biomass energy study circa
2006 found that much of charcoaling was on private trees from farms, just
as was known to be the case before 1994.

You raise a wonderful opportunity, though, with your phrase ‎'inefficient
charcoal production'.

>From what you write about "sustainable sources" of feedstock for charcoal,
arguably if the feedstock is sustainable, efficiencies per se don't matter,
right?

Take the same argument to cookstoves that use wood directly. If the wood is
sustainably sourced, why do efficiencies matter? Or so much as to become
the prime metric on which you and others go on with fierce debates on
testing protocols?

The answer, of course, is that "sustainable" means very different things to
physicists and economists, the joule-counters and the penny-counters.
"Sustainable" or "renewable" wood (direct or charcoal) has opportunity
costs of land, water, labor, and capital, and these costs are contextual.
There is no reason to have thermal efficiency - in stoves or kilns - a
transcendent metric worldwide. The ISO exercise is therefore fatally
flawed.

Some ten years ago, I had done rough calculations of a "whole fuel cycle"
carbon and money accounting for making charcoal from the boreal forests of
Europe and Canada and exporting it to tropical countries' cities reachable
by sea/river transport, thus preserving tropical forests. Worth a try.

+++++++

Re: your question, "Where can the stove producers place their efforts most
effectively?"

1. Public health advocates' attack on solid fuels per se - and kerosene -
must be effectively countered. Fuels or stoves are not "dirty" in and of
themselves, a simple fact missed by scientists of different persuasion.

Kirk Smith was quoted in an October 2015 Washington Post opinion piece, “As
yet, no biomass stove in the world is clean enough to be truly health
protective in household use.. We know what works. It’s gas or electricity
or both. Why are we pushing these strange new gadgets that we never use
here? It’s an ethical issue.” (These cheap, clean stoves were supposed to
save millions of lives. What happened?
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-cheap-clean-stoves-were-supposed-to-save-millions-of-lives-what-happened/2015/10/29/c0b98f38-77fa-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html>
Marc Gunther, Washington Post 29 October 2015).

Kirk Smith is also against use of kerosene for cooking (I will send a piece
on his enthusiasm for ending kerosene subsidies in India). As is WHO "The
reclassification of kerosene as a polluting fuel changes our understanding
of access to clean energy dramatically in some countries (WHO 2016
<http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/204717/1/9789241565233_eng.pdf>,
p. ix)


2. Stove entrepreneurs should seek upstream integration in fuel sourcing
and preparation or combine fuel/stove technologies with water technologies.
Small battery charging products for lighting and mobile phones could also
be mixed; these are high-value businesses. Anand Karve has worked on both
fuel preparation from wastes as well as better stoves (and much else) but I
don't know if ARTI has had any "integrated" project like gas companies do
-- delivering both fuel and stove.

I traced a discussion among Paul, Tony and Rebecca earlier this year about
wodo briquettes and Eco-Kalan stoves.

Inyenyeri <https://www.inyenyeri.org/> in Rwanda is another example. They
combine pellet-making in return for their stoves, and the feedstock
suppliers can sell these to urban and peri-urban customers. They won one of
the two advanced ERPA (Emission Reductions Purchase Agreement) under World
Bank-administered Ci-Dev. (Inyenyeri Signs Landmark Deal with World Bank to
Scale Renewable Energy Company in Rwanda
<http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/214095/> The New Times, Kigali 12
June 2017) Another Rwanda company, Del Aqua <http://www.delagua.org/>, is
getting a similar advance for "gasifying" stoves (along with advanced water
filters). With other projects using biodigesters, it seems that pro-poor
energy technology finance is now available for innovative businesses.

Some of these Ci-Dev projects <http://carbon-pulse.com/14911/> is done
under a CDM POA (Program of Activities), which is a promising route.  It is
also encouraging to read that among the donors to Ci-Dev, "The UK is going
to retire any CERs received, while the others use them to meet national
emissions targets." (What a shame, Sweden and Switzerland.)

I remember BP/Castrol had a project in India to sell Oorja
<http://firstenergy.in/> stove along with wood pellets.  The household
market fell through when the price of pellet feedstocks rose - thanks to
India's construction boom and brick-making kilns - and now with LPG
subsidies, households market will not recover. But they are making products
for other markets.

Frank is correct -- FIX THE FUEL. Perhaps the best way to do is to control
fuel supplies - quality and reliability - and find markets where fuel/stove
combinations can be promoted.

I would add also FIX the market.

But if we are stuck in fuel-free, food-free paradigm, we would only be able
to market stoves where fuel savings have the highest value. Good luck
finding them.

Even then we would be criticized by Kirk Smith & Co if there is any
"stacking".


--
I would like some form of carbon finance without marketable ERPAs and
without too many pre-conditions or high-cost GJ verification/certification
costs through the duration of a project. Now that we see some financing
vehicles, I think the major challenge is identifying markets where
fuel/stove or fuel/stove/water combinations can be popularized (including
for non-household customers) and investors attracted to such markets.

A steep climb. Carbon finance is no panacea. Nor aDALY finance.  And
certifying middlemen can be costly and risky.

Nikhil



On Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 7:56 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Paul and All
>
> "...the Uga Stove in  Uganda that received great praise for being the
> first carbon credit / Gold Standard project for stoves) earn 1 or 1.5
> carbon   credits per year for using LESS charcoal, but that charcoal  is
> STILL produced very poorly via traditional char-making methods."
>
> While it is 'de rigeur' to repeat the ‎'inefficient charcoal production'
> mantra each time money is being chased I would like to point out that in
> Rwanda, in a period of only a few years, the sector has modernised to such
> an extent that all charcoal is now produced from sustainable sources, none
> of it from original forest reserves. It has become a 'grow and process'
> business.
>
> CDM carbon offsets are available for 'unsustainable' biomass use, meaning
> that there is net clearing of forest reserve as happened around Lusaka for
> domestic charcoal and for brick making around Lubumbashi‎.
>
> In order to attract funding for a char-producing stove one has to consider
> the scale involved. If the input fuel is sustainably ‎sourced, the only
> credit is for the mass produced. It may be best to seek displacement
> instead of sequestration. This is what Sujatha has done. The char is
> collected and used in a foundry instead of coal.
>
> The foundry can take a huge amount, and the effect on the fuel source
> directly measured. ‎It is also not as dependent on the price of carbon
> credits which low and falling.
>
> Seeking sequestration as biochar the with an additional argument that
> there is universal benefit for agriculture just adds another hurdle of
> proof. I think it is unnecessary in the present market. The immediate
> challenge is product development, production and use, with a demonstration
> on the scale of Sujatha's product and linkage.
>
> As theoretically attractive as it may be, selling an agricultural benefit
> without 'draw' from agriculture workers will add a burden, not an
> opportunity.
>
> The production of biodynamic gardening fertilizers that contain a fraction
> of char is a complex and carefully managed process. If you can link to a
> group that is 'pulling' (creating demand) it would be great. Pushing
> requires more energy and organisation.
>
> Where can the stove producers place their efforts most effectively?
>
> Regards
> Crispin
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