[Stoves] Off-topic: "Wood pellet CEO claims biomass carbon neutrality, despite science"

[Nikhil Desai]

COP25: Wood pellet CEO claims biomass carbon neutrality, despite science
<https://news.mongabay.com/2019/12/cop25-wood-pellet-ceo-claims-biomass-carbon-neutrality-despite-science/>
, Mongabay 13 December 2019
Paul, Crispin:

I address this to you because I know you two have worked with carbon
credits and fNRB under CDM and Gold Standard farce for high-priced
consultants.

This is on-topic because Kirk Smith did point out that uncontrolled biomass
cooking is indeed NOT carbon neutral. But the myth pervades. Some others on
the list presume that by calling biomass "renewable", it is also "carbon
neutral"`.

That is a lie and, worse, it compromises the professed interests of the
designers and promoters of biomass cookstoves. You all have been taken for
a ride by the IPCC cooking a poison pie of national GHG inventorying.

I have a longer post on the history of IPCC accounting loopholes and
shenanigans. In short, I do not believe that more efficient biomass stoves
do not deserve "carbon credits" unless the fuel supply is "non-renewable."

If at all, cookstoves that sharply reduce PICs even as they increase CO2 -
i.e., unit emission rate per TJ useful - should get "carbon credits" even
as they INCREASE CO2 emissions. The CDM rules on "fNRB" (fraction
non-renewable biomass) is stupidity married to ideology. (I think I was the
first person ever to compute country-level "fuelwood deficit" - the fNRB -
back in March 1982).

Bill Moomaw - an academic whose proclamations I often find irrelevant - is
on the mark here, referring to biomass co-firing of dendrothermal power: “From
an emissions standpoint, the UK would be better off burning coal and
leaving those trees standing as long as possible.”

Moomaw is predictably obsessed by CO2. If at all, power plants have a
sharply lower carbon emissions footprint when ALL carbon emissions are
compared in CO2-equivalent terms (I prefer 20-year GWP because it implies a
3% real discount rate).

That is, compared to uncontrolled combustion of biomass - where fuels of
lower quality (heating value) have even worse emission footprint - biomass
power in a large-scale power plant is better, from health and climate
points of view (borrowing Kirk Smith's phrase).

And, if Moomaw is correct, pellet power is worse than coal.

Go figure.

1. Compared to uncontrolled biomass combustion for household cooking, even
coal power is superior from both health and environmental viewpoint. (I did
some rough global computation back in 2005 and revised it in 2012, using
emission factors from Kirk and Tami. I have no reason to revisit this
conclusion. I am glad Moomaw and others have pointed out the accounting
flaw which is actually a political charade.)

2. All that design and promotion of clean biomass stoves need to do is
demonstrate that, in actual use, their stoves have a better CO2e
performance than coal power plants (including credit for avoided line
losses).

3. Crediting for emission reductions should be in GROSS CO2e terms, WITHOUT
any deduction for "renewable biomass". (Renewed biomass - i.e., carbon
sequestration - is a matter of local soil and moisture, species, duration
and yes, even CO2 concentrations and local temperatures.)

The hundreds of millions of dollars of EU subsidies for wood pellet
industry should be available for lower-CO2e biomass cooking. (Or LPG and
electric cooking, which too are lower CO2e than the mythical Three Stone
Fire.)

Even if \US wood pellets in UK power plants don't meet Kyoto rules, wood
pellet cookstoves as in the Ci-Dev finance for Inyenyeri in Rwanda should
be protected under the Paris Agreement Article 6 under the presumption that
all CO2e reductions compared to the baseline are "sustainable development".
No deduction of "fraction renewable".

IPCC accounting rules are NOT "science". They were politically engineered.
I know because I was in the wings as the distinctly anti-poor methods were
baked into the poisonous pie. (Started with the nuclear godfather Al
Weinberg's accounting of fossil CO2 using false emission factors, but that
is another story. Weinberg's team did not bother with biomass, and CO2 is
reasonable proxy for century long modeling of atmospheric carbon. To me,
the short term matters more than the long term, and the lives of the poor
more than the coastal mansions of the rich.)

N

PS: I cannot resist this comment. Moomaw says “It’s all about the money.
The wood pellet industry is a monster out of control.”  The same is true of
the academic bureaucratic consultant donors complex of the Global Alliance
of Clean Cookstoves and now the Clean Cooking Alliance. They should all be
ashamed, as also Moomaw for his hysteria.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*
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