[Stoves] Unexpected Rising Levels of Atmospheric Methane

[Daniel]

Stover's, around here in Ohio, we are limited burning off wasted brush and even low grade " softwood" ( around here any wood with a density lower than Ash is considered softwood, that includes woods like Cottonwood, soft Maple, any evergreen, Willow ect. )  . Most of it is piled up to rot on farms or chipped into mulch in the cities.  Either way we have traded particulate pollution for more methane from slow - semi-  anerobic decay. Maybe that is some of that extra methane.the rest is unreported emissions from fossil fuel production. They are just getting a handle on that but nobody wants to pay to clean it up. The Permian basin has a methane cloud over it. - Dan.

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Droid
On Mar 5, 2019 10:29 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> Dear Julien
>
> We have a few hundred tests from Yogyakarta that include CH4 measurements. In general CH4 tracks CO pretty closely at a fixed fraction (less than 100%).
>
> For a biomass stove with decent performance, the CO/CO2 ratio will average under 3%. Methane is perhaps 1/4 or 1/8th of that. Let's go with 1/5th.
>
> So that has methane at 0.6 of the CO2 emissions on a volumetric basis. Give it a 20 year CO2e of 20 (as discussed previously) it means 12% of the CO2.
>
> I can't see how this turns into money or benefit for anything. Stoves produce far less methane than another use of biomass. I think it is safe to assume, as CDM does, that all biomass C ends up as CO2 within a short time (which it does).
>
> Turning waste biomass into char and burying it (waste that would otherwise have been badly burned) has a net carbon draw down, for while. But the effect is Lilliputian compared with planting trees in the Sahel.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
> From: pienergy2008 at gmail.com
> Sent: March 5, 2019 9:20 PM
> To: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org; winter.julien at gmail.com
> Reply to: ndesai at alum.mit.edu
> Cc: d.michael.shafer at gmail.com; crispinpigott at outlook.com
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Unexpected Rising Levels of Atmospheric Methane
>
> Julian: 
>
> Thank you. 
>
> I agree in principle that changes in methane emissions should be recognized by stove testers. 
>
> However, a) methane measurements are inherently questionable even in labs, as Crispin has argued, b) field origins are below any de minimus standard I can imagine worth bothering about. 
>
> Until we get modern stoves accepted by tens of millions of people, I don't think obsessing over methane emission rates from biomass stoves is worth a dime. 
>
> Still, I would very much like to make it worth a dime per kgCO2e avoided - no cost-sharing with Gold Standard, and I will not license them the use of the standard. 
>
> Nikhil
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Nikhil Desai
> (US +1) 202 568 5831
> Skype: nikhildesai888
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 5, 2019 at 12:19 PM Julien Winter <winter.julien at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all;
>>
>> This week's podcast from the BBC's "Science in Action" talks about unexpected increases in methane, that may be coming from expanding wetlands in the tropics. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsnb "Rising Methane Levels Impact Climate Change"
>>
>> We need to have methane included as a standard measure of cookstove emissions.
>>
>> We should also be looking at the interaction between stoves and different types of fuels on the emissions of NOx
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Julien
>>
>> -- 
>> Julien Winter
>> Cobourg, ON, CANADA
>> _______________________ 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20190306/e367f979/attachment.html>