The Charcoal Project

BBC: Life-saving stove in the Congo

First the FT mentioned it. We blogged about it in December. Then CNN’s Anderson Cooper did a piece. Now it’s the BBC’s turn to take a whack a it, albeit with a twist. Whatever the case, I always learn something new from this story. In this case, it’s the alarming statistic that 90 percent of the women who travel to the forest for fuel reported been harassed, raped, or experienced violence while collecting woodfuel. 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.

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In 2007, Indoor Air Pollution from inefficient biomass combustion cost Peru U$321,123,160

Peru could have bought every rural poor two energy efficient stoves in 2007 for the equivalent of what Indoor Air Pollution cost the country. That would be U$321,123,160 in 2007, in case you were wondering.

As we discussed last week, The Charcoal Project is leading a research on a global analysis that would put a price tag on the inefficient domestic combustion of biomass as practiced today in the vast majority of the developing world.

The figure mentioned above comes from the World Bank’s  Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) reports published on their website.

We randomly selected the 2007 assessment for Peru.

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