The Charcoal Project

Help us track the cost of biomass fuel around the world

We just couldn’t resist preempting Steve Jobs‘ announcement of the next hot Apple gadget with our own launch today, the world’s first Global Biomass Index.

As we indicated before, the index will track the price of biomass and related fuels around the world.

The tool is a work in progress and you can expect to see greater functionality with each new version.

Ultimately, however, the index will only succeed if you help us by contributing information from wherever you are!


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REPORT: Indoor air kills 2.2 million young Chinese

BEIJING (AFP)  More than two million Chinese youths die each year from health problems related to indoor air pollution, with nearly half of them under five years of age, state media cited a government study as saying.

The study released by the China Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said indoor pollution levels can often be 5-10 times higher than those measured in the nation’s notoriously bad outdoor air, the China News Service said.

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A Man, a Stove, a Mission

Nathaniel Mulcahy’s speaks with the urgency and precision of someone on a mission and with little time.

Although he has patiently and politely dedicated the better part of an hour to our conversation, I know that the moment he hangs up he will be off to complete a million tasks on his to-do list.

Mulcahy has good reasons to be in a hurry. The first one is that he cheated death seven years ago following a really bad accident, so he’s a man on his second chance.

The second reason, which is linked to the first, is that he is determined to bring energy-efficient cookstoves to the world’s 2.4 billion people who sit at the bottom of the world’s energy ladder. They are the poorest of the poor who lack access to modern fuels and must make do with wood, charcoal, and animal dung to meet their everyday energy needs.

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