Concern about a land grab in Africa for the production of industrial-scale, ethanol-producing crops may well be justified, which is why bird-dogging the “African agricultural green-rush” is everyone’s responsibility.
Valuing Biomass
Putting a Price on Biodiversity Loss
What exactly is the cost to society when one million hectares (8,861 sq. miles, an area roughly the size of Costa Rica) of Brazilian rainforest disappears? The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) just released Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature, a report that aims to precisely answer that question. The report highlights government and business development policies that consistently fails to value the true cost of natural resources depletion. The report makes an excellent case for biodiversity loss valuation in all governmental decision-making processes. The report also highlights the strong link that exists between ecological conservation and a society’s ability to Continue reading
Charcoal: A Fuel in Urgent Need of Solutions
Sub-Saharan Africa today produces about the same amount of greenhouse gases from charcoal production and consumption as all of Europe’s transport combined.
If nothing changes, emissions are likely to triple by 2030.
New feature: Charcoal Price around the world
Tracking the price of charcoal within a country or region can provide valuable insight for researchers and entrepreneurs. Such information could help inform the pricing of briquettes, the relative cost of biomass in a region, and much more. In a few days we will post a section on our website’s homepage where you can track the values of charcoal from reporting countries. The information will be plotted using Google Earth and will also be available in a tabular format. But in order to do that, we need your help! Please send us an email with the following information: 1. Location, Continue reading
WHO: Boosting improved cookstoves by 50% by 2015 would yield $105 billions/year for energy poor
Equipping 50 percent of households that burn biomass with improved stoves by 2015 would cost about $2 billion upfront but would almost immediately yield $37 billion in fuel savings, leaving a net gain to the world’s energy poor of some $35 billion.
Over a ten year period this would generate an economic return of U$105 billion.