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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-CA link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Dear Tom<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Interesting development. How has that affected the wood pellet prices in the S.E. US which were quite depressed?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>></span><span lang=EN-US style='color:#1F497D'>Your call for processed fuels echoes on of our main recommendations to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN-US style='color:#1F497D'>I have been following that. What I see emerging is a long term appropriate of biomass for higher income users as they come under economic pressure, as their bills rise, especially for heating, and as technologies for efficiently processing the fuels (into pellets, for example) are reduced in size, cost and increase in efficiency.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN-US style='color:#1F497D'>The trend will then be towards …. Hmmmm, what is the word…. I guess ‘commodify’ is not the right one as biomass is already a commodity of sorts, even if it is collected mostly free. Maybe that is the only good name. It is turning an energy commons into a privatized commodity traded to people who have been convinced it is a better fuel. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>That which is promoted gets accepted, technologies are developed to enhance it, and it becomes ‘normal’. The problem we as a human society face is that there are strong pressures not to build small, inexpensive nuclear plants, like Thorium-Fluoride reactors, the greatest remaining hydro power sites are in unstable places (i.e. DR Congo which could power all of Europe), there is ineffectual promotion of fuel tree lots just about everywhere, speculators, taxes and protesters are making oil unaffordable and coal is demonised by no less than NASA and other public institutions. There is going to be nothing to cook and heat with.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Carbonisers want to bury more than ½ the energy available from biomass in the form of char. If that catches on in India it will reduce the available biomass energy in half (actually, more than half). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Can this more than be made up in increased combustion and heat transfer efficiency? I wonder. When it comes to space heating, you can’t reduce the energy requirement like you can with cooking. The building will have to be improved to reduce the energy need. Not so simple. Putting a chimney stove into a home where there had been an open fire (Nepal for example) reduces system efficiency – at least so far.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>There is a guy who lives on the West Coast who was once an Aprovecho person – very long ago, like in the 70’s. He is making a type of mud stove for heating clay buildings involving a long heated bench that you sleep on. It is a way of saving fuel. Who is that person? There is an unusual (and I thought CO-dangerous) combustor on that device which might be transformable into a higher efficiency heater. Been thinking about that one. What is it called??<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Regards<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Crispin<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>