The Charcoal Project

Can Haiti be the new Katrina?

What will it take?

What will it take to tip the scale in favor of a global crash program to swap out three-stones-and-a-pot for energy-efficient stoves, kilns, and sustainable alternative biofuels?

Will Haiti be to bioenergy what Katrina was to climate change?

How long before Al Gore, Angelina, or Bono take on bionergy as the next big inconvenient truth? The Charcoal Project’s intelligence services tell us there is already a film in the works.  Will Bono embrace the rocket stove onstage to his fan’s delight?

Perhaps it will be the lure of a multi-billion dollar global market in carbon offsets from stoves, kilns, and briquettes programs that will do the trick. Or maybe it will be the on-the-ground realities of  implementing REDD that will undo the Gordian knot.

And the point is…?

Actually, there are four points and they boil down to this: Continue reading

When good stove projects go bad!

How many abandoned stove projects litter the world? How much money have donors sunk into ill-conceived stove designs? Poorly executed marketing campaigns? And lack of investment in capacity building?

I raise this question because a recent conversation forced me to rethink one of my cherished assumptions: that local stove production was the only way to go. Continue reading

Haiti bioenergy relief initiative: connecting projects and funders

Following last week’s disaster, there’s a good chance that the number of people in Haiti depending on wood and charcoal for their every day needs has sky-rocketed from about 70% to close to 100%. The Charcoal Project is helping by connecting energy-efficient stove/kiln producers and sustainable biomass briquettes makers with potential government, multilateral, and NGO funders. The Charcoal Project will help by collecting information and matching funders with projects that are capable of delivering immediate solutions to Haiti’s urgent bioenergy needs. Continue reading