<div dir="ltr">Crispin, Paul: <br><br>Incentives are one option, penalties another. If they can be enforced. <br><br>In Indian Punjab, this problem was unintentionally addressed by a feed-in tariff for biomass power that was high enough to collect and deliver the agro waste to the power plant. <br><br>That was around 2004, when I met one of the project developers. Two years later, he found it uncompetitive because the farmers were demanding higher price at the farmgate - they had another customer, namely, brick kilns for the exploding construction market all around. <br><br>You can't solve an air basin quality problem by one cookstove at a time or one farm at a time; tinkering with emission rates and measuring them with lab protocols amounts to nothing unless there is an area-wide transformation of sources and/or fuels. This is where both the stovers as well as the gassers - I am coining a new word - fail. <br><br>I have two economics phrases everybody should keep in mind - "elasticity" (demand and supply, with respect to price, income, and substitutes) and "discount rate". <br><br>Without economics, physics is useless. <br><br>Nikhil<br><br><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="georgia, serif">Nikhil Desai</font></div><div><span style="font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:small">(US +1) 202 568 5831</span><font face="georgia, serif"><br><i>Skype: nikhildesai888</i><br></font><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 5:13 PM Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <<a href="mailto:crispinpigott@outlook.com">crispinpigott@outlook.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Dear Paul<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>></span><span lang="EN-US">Please confirm, but I am sure that those factories are quite large, and distance to transport the biomass can become a problem.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I understand that transport is not the main cost – collecting it from the field is.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">></span>If you want to burn it without smoke (which is not difficult) no one cares.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The issue is not the waste of biomass, it is air pollution. There are bans on burning, but usually it is burned at night by “persons unknown”.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">>Agreed. But they are not burning it without smoke. <u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All burning of it in the field is illegal.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">>So “not difficult” could also mean “not financially viable”.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is no incentive (at all) to burn it cleanly. It would first have to be collected. It is not worth it.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">>Please comment on the “not difficult” technology that you have in mind, and what are the costs associated with it.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You know well that this material can be burned in a TLUD or downdraft fashion. Alex English has some ideas. Anything useful would be continuous, so a trench-like device might be viable. Flame caps are the way forward – if that is what you
want to do. It doesn’t hvea to be done vertically.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">>Also, please comment on the degree to which mechanization (possibly smallish tractors??) is in use in the areas where burning is causing the air pollution problems. Raking straw manually is quite different from having a tractor-pulled
rake to create windrows of the agro-refuse (sort of like hay and straw operations in North America like I remember for decades ago in my youth.)<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At present no one is willing to pay farmers to remove and deliver agriwaste, (in most localities). Why would they do that work and then burn it just to be “clean”? If you are willing to pay them to do it, rather don’t burn it – make pellets
or fertiliser. But there is no subsidy for creating that, it has to float on its own income.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Due to the scale of the need, it seems large scale processing is the long term solution. I warn that they said the seasonality of the supply is a big issue. No one can afford to buy stock and hold it for a year.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Regard<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Crispin<u></u><u></u></p>
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