[Stoves] Carbon credits for briquettes that replace charcoal in Africa

Wed Jan 31 11:41:45 CST 2024

I do not know of an offset carbon credit protocol for using biochar to displace charcoal for cooking. Biochar is used to sequester carbon in the soil, not to be used as fuel.   

Attached are two presentations that explain how biochar works. It is successfully being deployed by thousands of smallholders in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially by two related projects. Warm Heart Malawi has expanded to Kenya, DR Congo and adjacent countries where soils are substantially depleted in carbon. An affiliate project, Biochar.Life, helps growers get carbon credits from making biochar and applying it to soil. Made from maize stalks and other residues the biochar is combined with manure. Some of the char can be labile and used by microorganisms. The recalcitrant portion provides a variety of benefits. It increases the biological carbon and enhances the carbon flow in the soil. We now have more than 30,000 peer reviewed papers and more than 3,000 meta studies (studies of studies) on the topic that demonstrate the positive and negative impacts in different soils and circumstances. You’ll find that the attached presentation by Dr. Stephen Joseph and the paper by Dr. Annette Cowie et. al. provide thorough explanations of our collective experience to date. 

Biochar Life is the first application of a protocol called Artisan C-Sink intended to benefit smallholders when making biochar from waste materials and using it in the soil. Biochar Life has an extensive monitoring and verification program which was described in December at an International Biochar Initiative Symposium. 

The Warm Heart methods (engineered pit kilns and simple TLUDS) are intended make biochar from maize stalks instead of open burning them. Stalks and cobs are carbonized and combined with manure. The blend is placed in the planting hole at planting and as top dressing during the growing season. The practical results have been increased yields with substantially reduced watering, healthier plants and no need for synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. Biochars fed to animals have reduced disease and increased egg, meat, and milk production. The results are there to see after more than five years of implementation. Each day the local project teams report training in villages of 30-100 people. These are low lost techniques deployed by very low budget programs.        

The concentration of carbon added to the planting hole is far higher than in an open burn. Maize residues can still be left on the soil. There would be about 7 tonnes per hectare in the unburned stubble, more than if the stubble was open burned. 

The methods promoted by Warm Heart/Biochar Life make more biochar that with cookstoves but there can be benefits from making biochar in stoves and recovering the heat from the process. I reported biochar developments this weekend to the ETHOS conference in Washington. Those who are developing cookstoves to make biochar report about 300gm per stove per day. If that results in approximately 1 metric tonne of biochar per year and the biochar is used in the soil than one household would sequester about 2.5 mt of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) have resulted in a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) potential of about 2.5 mtCO2e/mt biochar. I do not know of an ISO compliant Life Cycle Assessment of biochar producing cookstoves. I understand that an improved cookstove can offset about 1 mtCO2eper year.

Kind regards, 

Tom

Tom Miles

Executive Director

U.S. Biochar Initiative

“Promoting the Sustainable Production and Use of Biochar”

 <http://www.biochar-us.org/> www.biochar-us.org

 <mailto:usbiochar at gmail.com> tom at biochar-us.org

Facebook  <http://www.facebook.com/USbiochar/?fref=ts> US Biochar Initiative

Youtube  <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKE_YQA_eZsUXPXx21bzbqA> US Biochar Initiative

https://www.warmheartworldwide.org/what-is-biochar.html#:~:text=Biochar%20is%20pure%20carbon.,that%20contribute%20to%20global%20warming.

https://www.biochar.life/

https://www.ethoscon.com/meeting-2024-info

From: Stoves <stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org> On Behalf Of Ronal Larson
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2024 10:15 PM
To: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org; Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Carbon credits for briquettes that replace charcoal in Africa

Crispin and stoves list

              1.  I’’ve been following stoves and biochar for more than 25 years.  I’m sure I’ve read at least 1000 biochar articles.  Never have I seen anything in print that resembles your sentence from 2/3 down (that I also highlighted there).  My added emphasis.

 "Char created on the land and buried in it depletes the soil carbon because it goes from a soluble form to an insoluble form"

              2.  Please give any citation that caused you to assert what the biochar world believes to be untrue and violates the reason for biochar growing more rapidly than any other CDR approach. 

              3.   Or give your rationale, if you have no citation, given that insolubility is considered a principal virtue in the biochar community

Ron

On Jan 30, 2024, at 3:17 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com> > wrote:

Dear Teddy

Charcoal movement (distribution) has been banned since 2017 and it may in fact be illegal to make it, I am not sure, but in the beginning it was movement that was traceable and banned.

https://www.the-star.co.ke/sasa/lifestyle/2023-11-03-why-kenya-cannot-do-away-with-charcoal/

It is important to understand why national bans on a popular fuel are important.  When it is illegal to make or move charcoal, the charcoal mafia benefits, often including elected or influential officials and enforcement actors.  

In a Sahelian country charcoal was illegal. It was unbanned and the forests were placed under the control of the villages whose land it was. The illegal traders were immediately put out of business unless they paid for the resource they were stealing, and the management of the supply of trees immediately benefitted the community as a payment had to be made to the village. This continued with great and well managed success. The villages conserved and sold their resources and the “overheads” disappeared.  

After 4 years the President declared the whole business illegal again (through protesting salvationists?) and the illegal trade resumed.  It transpired that the head of the charcoal mafia, all along, was the president’s wife. 

Charcoal is big, big business.  Removing carbon from the land and burning it 100 km away depletes the soil.  Char created on the land and buried in it depletes the soil carbon because it goes from a soluble form to an insoluble form.  Should the composted stover be ploughed into the land for next year’s crop?  We have to hear from botanists.

As trees are cleared for farming, it dries the air and rainfall decreases.  That has been known for over a century, but it will of course be blamed on global warming.  Afforestation in Kenya was proposed in the 1930’s by Dr St Barbe Baker, famed for his Men of the Trees organization.  And he attempted it in the NW using peach trees.  Kenya could use afforestation and reforestation as well as sustainable supply management.  People are going to continue to cook with charcoal for decades or centuries in Africa.  We should arrange our affairs that it is possible and profitable. 

BTW charcoal making is one of the few activities in Africa that generates cash income for rural farmers.  Banning it effectively means banning them as viable farmers.

Regards

Crispin

From: Stoves <stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org <mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org> > On Behalf Of Cookswell Jikos
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2024 7:10 AM

Here is an interesting idea to utilize highly invasive woody plants to make biochar you might like Kevin, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI1uN1EFhUI <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI1uN1EFhUI&ab_channel=PlantVillageTV> &ab_channel=PlantVillageTV 

Wonders never cease to amaze in the woodfuel industry in Kenya, I went to a salt factory a few months ago and they said they use 30 tons of almost wet (!!) wood per day sourced by clearing land for pineapple farmers to force dry the salt (co-fired with TZ coal) and almost every other large industry that uses steam in Kenya seems to be switching to biomass boilers these days that are mostly using agri-waste (alot of which is grown on farms that were once forested not so long ago). Agroforestry is growing in popularity but not as fast as trees are being felled https://news.mongabay.com/2023/11/deforestation-continues-in-kenyas-largest-water-capturing-forest-satellites-show and meanwhile watch out for your maize stalks, they might be next ;)  https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/corporate/enterprise/eldoret-family-turns-maize-cobs-into-jet-fuel-addictive-3700610 

I sure hope that this new industrial demand for biomass and unplanned agricultural expansion doesn't wipe out any forest saving gains all the various cookstove projects have had in Kenya over the years. Speaking of, might anyone know how many donor funded 'cookstove projects' have there been in Kenya in the last 40 years? 

Teddy 

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