[Stoves] News: China Cleaner Burning Charcoal as a Transition Step to Save Lives and Climate

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

A news item below says solid fuels (charcoal) rescued China and will rescue
Africa.

WHO? :-)

But see Change in household fuels dominates the decrease in PM2.5 exposure
and premature mortality in China in 2005–2015
<http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/11/14/1812955115>, (PNAS 19
November 2018), which is all about fuel switch in households and claims "In
contrast, the emission reductions from power plants, industry, and
transportation contributed much less to the decrease of integrated exposure.
Clean household heating fuels have become part of recent control policies
in northern China, but such policy would be strengthened if extended to
heating and cooking countrywide since shift of the remaining household
solid fuels to clean fuels could additionally avoid an estimated
half-million premature deaths annually."  (emphasis in color added)

Contributed by Kirk Smith, the lone warrior in the world who saves more
Chinese people from marketing his models than saved by billions of dollars
spent on emission reductions from power plants, industry, and
transportation.

The magic of "integrated exposure". Kirk Smith's models are new medical
cannabis. For all we know, technological change in power and industry -
burning solid fuels cleaner - was a waste of money, just to keep foreign
financiers and advocacy groups like NRDC happy. But this suggests an
entirely different argument - technological change happens because of
economic imperatives - of new power plants and transport. industry - and
not because of purported "health benefits". Why are solid fuels assumed to
be dirty at home when the science says they can be burned as cleanly at
home as in a power plant? Because Kirk Smith assumes them to be so forever?

Marketing snake gas?


Nikhil

Cleaner Burning Charcoal as a Transition Step to Save Lives and Climate,
<http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/11/cleaner-burning-charcoal-as-a-transition-step-to-save-lives-and-climate.html>
24 November 2018

>From 2005 to 2015, China cut indoor air pollution in half. This was mostly
from the adoption of cleaner burning charcoal.

This saved 400,000 lives per year from lower exposure to 2.5-micron air
pollution. Fine-particle pollution causes premature death in people with
lung or heart disease and increases sickness. China will continue to reduce
exposure to fine particulate matter by 63 percent. This will prevent an
additional 510,000 premature deaths.
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