OPINION I almost cut myself shaving this morning while listening to a BBC News story about The Hartwell Paper, which I’d only heard about en passant. The Hartwell Paper was drafted by a group of academics in an attempt to offer a radically different way of framing the issues raised by climate change, and hence a different set of approaches for tackling them. I’m writing about this now because, if the ideas put forward gain traction, they have the potential to place energy poverty and unsustainable biomass dependence where it belongs: out of the sustainable development wilderness and into the Continue reading
Poverty
UN report Energy for a Sustainable Future is pie in the sky
OPINION – Do the energy poor, especially those who depend on biomass for their primary fuel have to wait until electricity magically arrives in their home before they can get rid of their three-rocks-and-pot that is killing their children, mother, and wives?
This question was actually bravely posed at the UN last week in a closed door Q&A session held after the release of a report called Energy for a Sustainable Future.
The response given was, literally,”nothing.” Nothing is being done for the energy poor until electricity arrives.
When it’s Earth Day in America, is it Earth Day everywhere?
OPINION
So, to answer the question, “when it’s Earth Day in America is it Earth Day everywhere?”
The answer is, sadly, no.
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.
Green tech, clean fuels for the rich and wood, charcoal, and animal dung for the poor.
Industrialized and emerging nations are poised to leap into the clean fuel and green technology future, leaving behind nearly a third of the world’s population who is destined to continue burning wood, charcoal, and animal dung using noxious technologies that have remained unevolved for the last 3000 years. What’s up with that?