[Stoves] SUBSIDY for new CO2e emissions tops US$150 per ton

Mon May 27 02:26:25 CDT 2019

Crispin:

Promotion of bioenergy qua bioenergy and nothing else is a luxury of the landed gentry of rich countries.

Some ten years ago, my home was packed up and put in storage, with furniture and kitchen taken to my children or discarded.

Today I opened the last container in storage and drove boxes of clothes, and books, papers, media of the first 25 years of my work life, to my son’s home.

I threw out piles and piles of reports on energy, environment, water management, forestry, agriculture, urban development, rural development, finance, and law.

I mention this because I kept some papers on household energy, including a piece on Addis Ababa biomass energy I did in 1993. 

I threw out, however, some 5-6 shelf-feet material on bioenergy, a lot of between 1995 and 2005 from US and EU government departments, think tanks, OECD, and the World Bank. Even country reports like Gerry Leach’s on Pakistan biomass energy, others on Ethiopia, India, Mozambique. Not worth a bother; nothing good ever came out of bioenergy supply promotion in the developing countries. The hysteria after Erik Ekholm’s 1975 book The Other Energy Crisis only led to one dead end after another.

Too much time and money has been spent on bioenergy promotion. I was under the apparently false impression that this list was about small-scale combustion of biomass, promoting LOWER unit use and collective use of such biomass.

As Kirk H. would have it, this list must advocate HIGHER use of biomass in stoves. 

Effectively, this would mean cutting more trees down. 

Somehow I don’t think that’s what Paul, you, and others have spent your useful bioenergy on. 

I might get around to writing an opinion piece that a general, indiscriminate promotion of bioenergy - whatever the form, location, cost, use technology and environmental consequences - is a fancy of luxurious rich of the last Century, an intellectual crime against poor, landless people in the developing world.

I do have high hopes for better combustion of solid fuels, at small and large levels, with technology choice being contextually dependent - fuel qualities, relative costs, user preferences.

Keep up the good technology development work. If Kirk H. is interested in starting a list to discuss efficiency of solid biomass production, I am all game.

If anybody else on this list is interested, I will start with the first exploratory question - how much does it cost to produce a ton of solid biomass in, say, 50 - even 5 - developing countries, and how have these costs changed in the last 30 years? 

Second, given these trends, what kind of subsidies would lower the cost of a billion tons of solid biomass by 50% in 30 years?

This question is not idle or search for a grant. I once prepared estimates of investment requirements in the forestry sectors of the developing countries to meet the fuelwood demands of cooking. 

I did that for the World Bank February 1982. Those numbers might have been used in the 1983 report The Energy Transition in Developing Countries and then became the basis for FAO/WRI work on Tropical Forestry Action Plan or something by mid- to late 1980s.

Maybe Kirk H. knows something I don’t know about promoting bioenergy for the poor.

To me, subsidies for bioenergy have been puny but largely because they yielded very little in benefits to the poor in the developing world. Bagasse cogen, cane ethanol, have made rich people rich.

No surprise. Poverty is a lucrative business for rich theorists. I did my fling too; no more. 

As it happens, I also saw today my copy of the first World Bank working paper on fossil fuel subsidies circa 1990-5; I forget the name or the authors. The first author was a Pakistani economist; I can dig it up. It served no purpose, nor is this IMF report will serve any. (I did once have an opportunity to fight IMF for tax exemption for diesel in a power supply crisis. They conceded before I even needed to prepare a request. Kirk H. may see this as a proof of my support for fossil fuels. He can enjoy darkness for months when the lights go out. I had to for some 18 hours because I didn’t have a generator like many of my neighbors did.)

Nikhil 

PS: I did find and preserve my copy of the classic 1979 OTA report The Direct Use of Coal. The general insights are applicable to high quality solid biomass as well. Now let’s just hope that Kirk H. can deliver solid biomass worth subsidies.

Nikhil Desai
+1 202 568 5831
Skype: nikhildesai888

> On May 26, 2019, at 11:04 PM, Kirk H. <gkharris316 at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> Kirk
>  
> Start your own discussion list; restrict it as you will.
>  
> I was thinking the same of those who promote fossil fuels on a biomass cooking stoves list.
>  
> >How about helping promote biofuels so they can take over their share of the load,
>  
> Biofuels are defined how, exactly?  How old can a biofuel be and qualify on your list?
>  
> Biomass fuels cannot be old enough to be fossil fuels.  This is not my list, but I can contribute.  Please do not try to distract attention away from biomass fuel and stove development.
>  
> >…instead of writing biofuels off and promoting fossil fuels. 
>  
> Nikhil did no such thing.  Don’t invent text in the pens of others.
>  
> Yes, he did. 
>  
> >Perhaps you really should be on a fossil fuels list, promoting biofuels. 
>  
> There is no “fossil fuels” list nor any need of one.  We are not here to “promote biofuels”. 
>  
> True, no fossil fuels list is needed, because fossil fuels are already well developed.  We do need a biomass stoves list which focuses on biomass fuels rather than fossil fuels.  We also are not here to “promote fossil fuels”.
>  
> Biomass gasification can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while providing a renewable source of energy.  We can do that on a small scale with stoves or on a larger scale with power plants.  Fossil fuels cannot do this.
>  
> One of the greatest tragedies in Earthly environment is the on-going vast destruction of the jungles in Malaysia and Indonesia to create “biofuel plantations” to create biodiesel to meet the EU’s minimum % content for biodiesel. It is an insane plan with terrible consequences.
>  
> Please reread my contributions.  At no point do I promote cutting down jungles in Malaysia.
> What I promote is using brush (help mitigate wild fires), agricultural waste (instead of burning it in piles), and farming fuels (like switch and Napier grass which can also improve marginal soils).
>  
> The greatest “success” of this new form of biofuel is the extraordinary, even unparalleled, has been the destruction of forests and animals because of pressure from “green groups” to “save the environment”.  There are some terrible biofuels.
>  
> We disagree here.  Fossil fuels do their share of destruction.  For biomass, this problem relates more to foolish or ignorant use than to the overall promise.  Wise and informed choices need to be made here.  Can you use your knowledge to help make wise biomass fuel development choices to help guide us?  Or do you want to waste your and our time focusing on fossil fuels.  Fossil fuels are a fossil, we need better (that would make a better baseball cap inscription than MAGA).  We have progressed in making wise choices on this list with cooking stoves.
>  
> Dr. Anderson promotes TLUD gasifiers in ways he considers best.  I like that he shares what he knows freely and binds his tongue when he does not know what he is talking about.
>  
> He among others are doing wonderful things.
>  
> May we all make progress together.
>  
> We might agree here, depending on what you mean by progress.
>  
> Crispin
>  
> This is a good discussion, Thank You,
>  
> Kirk H.
>  
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>  
> From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
> Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2019 5:57 PM
> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] SUBSIDY for new CO2e emissions tops US$150 per ton
>  
> Kirk
>  
> Start your own discussion list; restrict it as you will.
>  
> >How about helping promote biofuels so they can take over their share of the load,
>  
> Biofuels are defined how, exactly?  How old can a biofuel be and qualify on your list?
>  
> >…instead of writing biofuels off and promoting fossil fuels. 
>  
> Nikhil did no such thing.  Don’t invent text in the pens of others.
>  
> >Perhaps you really should be on a fossil fuels list, promoting biofuels. 
>  
> There is no “fossil fuels” list nor any need of one.  We are not here to “promote biofuels”. 
>  
> One of the greatest tragedies in Earthly environment is the on-going vast destruction of the jungles in Malaysia and Indonesia to create “biofuel plantations” to create biodiesel to meet the EU’s minimum % content for biodiesel. It is an insane plan with terrible consequences.
>  
> The greatest “success” of this new form of biofuel is the extraordinary, even unparalleled, has been the destruction of forests and animals because of pressure from “green groups” to “save the environment”.  There are some terrible biofuels.
>  
> Dr. Anderson promotes TLUD gasifiers in ways he considers best.  I like that he shares what he knows freely and binds his tongue when he does not know what he is talking about.
>  
> May we all make progress together.
> Crispin
>  
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