Speaking Tuesday at a briefing on Capitol Hill, EPA officials said that “black carbon” (BC), an important factor in global warming and major by-product of solid biomass fuel and dirty diesel emissions, would figure prominently in a International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report due out next year. BC emissions can also seriously affect the health of residents in households that depend on burning wood, charcoal, animal dung, and agricultural residues for home cooking and heating. Another scientific paper due out early next year is likely to cast much needed light on the role of BC on global warming. The Continue reading
Voluntary Carbon Market
Tool: generating carbon credits from stove projects (PCIA)
The latest quarterly update from the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (Bulletin 23)is dedicated to harnessing the power of the carbon credit market to support stove projects around the world. Continue reading
Malawi: Improved stove and kilns program cashes in on carbon offsets
So you think you can’t reduce energy poverty, cut greenhouse gas emissions, create jobs, and turn a profit at the same time in one of the world’s poorest countries?
Conor Fox thinks otherwise.
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
Video: Africa’s forest have a lot to offer in Copenhagen
There is an excellent film by South Africa-based photojournalist Jeffrey Barbee that will hopefully get quite a bit of play in Copenhagen. It explores how African forests and woodfuel efficiency can play a big role in reducing CO2 emissions while improving people’s livelihood. We were especially interested to learn through this film about a stoves project in Malawi which is not only improving the lives the local inhabitants but also providing valuable carbon credits to an eco securities firm for sale on the voluntary carbon market. (The segment about Malawi and the stoves begins at 5:40 on part 2 but Continue reading