We were very pleased to receive this morning a letter from the United Nations Environment Programme that recognizes the unsustainable nature of current levels of charcoal production and consumption in sub-Saharan Africa, and the threat this poses to the progress on the MDGs. The letter, signed by Mr. Mounkaila Goumandakoye, Director and Regional Representative of UNEP in Africa, also expresses the agency’s support for The Charcoal Project’s effort to organize the first International Conference on Charcoal, scheduled to take place in the first half of 2012 in Africa. Although we regret UNEP’s Executive Director, Achim Steiner, will not be able Continue reading
Poverty
Providing reliable, clean energy to 3 billion people will not break the bank or the environment.
“Delivering efficient, clean energy to those who lack electricity is not as daunting as it sounds.” — Prof. Daniel M. Kammen, The World Bank Whether it was the topic at hand, or the possibility of catching a bite to eat, it was standing-room-only at a lunch-time panel last Monday at the UNDP offices in New York. On the agenda was how UN agencies and other development institutions plan to facilitate access to energy by 2030 for the 3 billion people worldwide who still lack electricity and clean cooking solutions. To kickstart this ambitious effort, the UN has declared 2012 the Continue reading
IEA: Providing electricity and sustainable energy for all is within reach.
OPINION How many economists do you know that you can call a rock star or a superhero? In our books, Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the IEA (International Energy Agency) is up there with Superman and Captain Planet. That’s because no economist out there has so tirelessly advocated for help for the 3 billion people who lack access to electricity or depend on wood, charcoal, and other solid biomass fuels for cooking and heating. In his most recent statement, Dr. Birol points out that it would take only about 3% of the projected global energy investment of over USD 26 Continue reading
Haiti’s charcoal crisis comes into focus, but is anyone listening?
(Reporter William Wheeler writes about Haiti’s addiction to biomass in the most recent issue of Good Magazine)
Elizabeth Sipple, an agronomist who recently took a post as the director of International Lifeline Fund’s Haiti program, is working to wean Haiti off a lethal addiction: wood and charcoal, which supply the majority of Haiti’s energy needs.
The main source of revenue in the countryside is cutting trees for firewood and charcoal production—part of a hugely inefficient wood habit that consumes trees much more quickly than they can regenerate.
This dependency has cost the country its forests, sapped its fertility, and set the stage for an increasing series of natural disasters, including—by driving migration into the congested, anarchically-constructed capital—the human impact of the earthquake that killed roughly a quarter of a million people.
TANZANIA: Economic recovery hurting energy poor; shift to charcoal from kerosene
The prices of kerosene, cooking gas, and electricity have gone up by 6, 20, and 18.5 per cent respectively. Experts say this leaves most households in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and other urban centres with little choice but to shift to charcoal.