IAP Deaths Twice That From Malaria: Ban-Ki-Moon

“Some 3 billion people still rely on traditional biomass fuels and coal which results in 2 million deaths every year because of indoor air pollution. Number of deaths caused due to smoke from burning coal and biomass fuels are twice (those) caused by malaria worldwide.”, said, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon at the Fourth World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.

He pointed out that there are about 1.6 billion people in the developing world who lack any source of electricity and about 3 billion who use backwards methods for cooking.

He urged the future energy leaders to create a world which has a sustainable future and people are passionate about the environment. He said, “People who recognize that our air, water and land are our most precious assets, people who understand the central role of clean energy in mitigating climate change and powering green economic growth; in defeating poverty and empowering women; in improving global health and achieving the Millennium Development Goals are required.”

He said that it was possible to achieve the goal on energy demand. All it needed was focus and sustained political commitment. With new models and incentives, it is possible to provide health, educational and social benefits through modern energy sources to all sections of the society.

Read the press release:  UN Secretary-General Says Every Household Should Have Lights, Telephones, a Way of Cooking that Does Not Damage Health

US EPA Defers GHG Permitting Requirements For Industries Using Biomass

Producers and consumers of biomass energy can now breathe easy for three years. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has postponed the decision making on emissions from biomass–fired and other bio-genic sources from greenhouse gas (GHG) permitting requirements for CO2 emissions for three years, as per a Press Release by EPA. The rule making will be ready by July 2011, after consultation with independent scientific analysts. 

EPA will use these three years to critically examine and analyze ways to determine the treatment of the emissions from biomass under GHG permitting requirements.

According to EPA Administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, the organization is trying to find scientific solutions that will address the issues of both producers and consumers for biomass energy. "In the coming years we will develop a commonsense approach that protects our environment and encourages the use of clean energy. Renewable, homegrown power sources are essential to our energy future, and an important step to cutting the pollution responsible for climate change," she said.

Read the Press Release on: EPA to Defer GHG Permitting Requirements 

Afghanistan's Big Killer Is In The Kitchen

Afghanistan is among the top ten countries worst- affected by indoor pollution, as per the World Health Organization, with more than 95 per cent of Afghanistan’s 30 million people burning solid fuels like wood and coal in their homes, reports Reuters.

More than 54,000 Afghans die each year from diseases attributed to inhaling smoke from cooking and burning, accounting for more deaths than even the violence in the war-ridden country where, according to the United Nations, over 2,400 civilians died in conflict related violence in the first ten months of 2010.

Afghanistan's acting Minister of Public Health Dr Suraya Dalil feels that women and children are the worst affected by indoor pollution as they spend a lot of the time indoors, specially in the harsh winters.

Photo Courtesy: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

Read the full story on: Winter brings fiery killer into Afghan homes

Gasifier To Produce Biochar

Energy Quest, Inc., an organization working on the development, construction and marketing of low-cost alternate fuels worldwide has said that its gasification process can produce biochar from agricultural wastes and other biomass, as per a press release.

The process employs simple changes like speeding up the biomass fuel and adjusting the process parameters to increase the content of carbon in the solid residue generated from gasifier and provide high quality agricultural grade soil amending biochar.

A modular gasification bio-energy plant consuming 10 to 12 tonnes per hour of agricultural waste biomass available locally can produce 16 to 18 thousand tonnes of biochar per year. According to Christoph Steiner, a University of Georgia research scientist in the Faculty of Engineering comments, "The potential of biochar lies in its ability to sequester-capture and store huge amounts of carbon while also displacing fossil fuel energy, effectively doubling its carbon impact. Scientists estimate biochar from agriculture and forestry residues can potentially sequester billions of tons of carbon in the world's soils."

Production of biochar from a gasifier can slash the set up costs and increase the efficiency and also provide clean syngas fuel for heat and power generation.

Photo Courtesy: Energy Quest, Inc.
Read the full story on: Energy Quest, Inc. Gasification Process Can Produce Biochar

World Bank Encourages Clean Cookstoves in Africa

World Bank is set to endorse commercialization and judicious use of biomass based energy for cooking, lighting and powering machines through a multi-million shilling project aimed at nine African countries, as per a report in Business Daily. The $3.5 million initiative will focus on 10 projects chosen out of 100 proposals covering Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Benin, Gambia, South Africa and Mozambique.

“The bank will finance projects promoting the production and use of biomass fuel, such as energy saving charcoal stoves and clean biogas”, said Mr Waqar Haider, a senior energy specialist at the World Bank. “An objective of the programme is to identify projects that can be incorporated in future World Bank’s lending portfolio”, Mr Heider added.

“Charcoal and firewood constitute for the major energy source for Sub-Saharan Africa and the most charcoal cooking equipment are inefficient and emit high levels of pollution impacting negatively on health of the users and on the environment”, said, Mr Johannes Zutt, the World Bank Country Director for Kenya. “Despite its social, economic and environmental importance, investments in biomass energy makes up less than four per cent of energy access expansion projects,” Mr. Zutt added.

The rural biodiesel project in Kenya, started by Help Self Help Centre, a non-governmental organization in Nairobi will be up-scaled and will support use of biodiesel for vehicles and generators and bio-kerosene for lighting and cooking. The fuel will be locally extracted from available tree seeds. The Project will allow adoption of bio-fuels by 3.000 households whilst ensuring development of five seed collection centres.

“The money will be used to upscale production output from 300 to 800 litres per day. We will also be introducing cooking stoves and lamps while expanding the programme,” said Bernard Muchiri, director of Help Self Help Centre.

The Project will finance production of 10,000 stoves in Uganda by local tinsmiths and small business entrepreneurs through the Centre for Research in Energy and Conservation in the faculty of technology at Makerere University.

The Project money will be used to raise awareness among the inhabitants and encourage tree planting.

Read the full story on: Bank funds biomass projects in Africa

Indian MNRE Pilot Project To Evaluate Community-Sized Cookstoves

A pilot for field testing and evaluation of community sized biomass cookstoves for subsequent development and deployment of improved cookstoves is now being implemented by India's Delhi IIT on a mandate from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy.

The project will be implemented through nine field agencies in eight states: Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa. Each agency will be installing fifty stoves in the clusters that have been already identified.

Based on the requirements of each location, the stoves will have to be of three sizes. The smallest size of the stove will aim at catering to 50 people, the medium size for 100-150 people, while the large size stove is targeted at restaurants and commercial setups. The stoves are expected to have fuel burning rate/power output ranging from 5KW to 10KW (consuming about 4kg to 8kg of biomass per hour respectively) and the efficiency of the stove should not be less than 30% in a water boiling test in the laboratory.

The emission rate from the stoves are required to meet the BIS standards of CO, CO2 ratio, not more than 0.04 and particulate matter 2mg/m3. The stoves should carry a warranty of 3 years for the combustion chamber and 2 years for other accessories such as fan and motor. It should also be able to use locally available biomass or be supplied with fuel such as pellets, briquettes with fixed prices for 2 years.

The manufacturers who get the order are to deliver the stoves to the various implementing agencies directly and get the payments from them. However, in case of fixed type of stoves, the manufacturer/supplier is supposed to construct them on the specific sites identified by the implementing agencies.

The selected bidders will have to submit at least one sample to IIT Delhi for testing the parameters.

The Notice Inviting Quotation for technical and financial bid submission from cookstove manufacturers was open till 3rd January, 2011.

"A Woman's Issue, A Children's Issue, An Economic Issue"

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves was covered on “The Martha Stewart Show” to raise awareness about the unique role clean cookstoves play in saving lives, improving livelihoods, empowering women, and combating climate change. Martha encouraged her viewers to join the clean cookstove movement.

Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), appeared on the show to explain how clean cookstoves can deliver significant environmental and health benefits in the developing world. Jackson said, "This is a women's issue, a childrens' issue, and an economic issue."

Aaron Sherinian, representative of the Alliance of the United Nations Foundation stated that "Cooking shouldn't kill, but for many women and families around the world it does. Everyone can get involved and tell the world that this issue matters and should be at the top of the global agenda."

Uganda Stoves Project Saving Money, Creating Jobs

Climate Care's Uganda Stoves Project which provides efficient wood burning stoves to families and institutions in Kampala is currently distributing both an improved fuel-efficient residential wood stoves and an improved fuel-efficient institutional wood stove.

The project aims to install 20,000 stoves every year initially, with the hope of in the initial years, with the intent of increasing sales in later years. Each stove will have an average life of 3 years.

The stoves have increased family incomes due to reduced expenditure on wood fuel as well improved general health of the family due to reduction in toxic fumes. According to Climate Change, reduced deforestation in Uganda is the biggest environmental benefit from the project.

The project will assist in building a better economic base for the country with improvements in local technological and business capability as well as new employment opportunities, says Climate Care.

Kiwa, the Inventory Manager at Uganda Stove Manufacturers Ltd, where the efficient stoves are made, says, “The people living in this area of Kampala are very poor. The stove factory has brought a lot of employment to the area and now employs 56 people, mostly residents of the local parish.”

Carbon financing is also helping sustain such enterprises and also provide good living conditions to the local inhabitants. David Mukisa, who heads the Uganda Improved Cooking project in Kampala explains how carbon finance through the voluntary market has helped the project, “I think that this project is a really good example of a success story of the voluntary carbon market mechanism. In the first year of our improved cooking stove project here in Kampala we did not have access to carbon finance and the business model proved to be unsustainable, with just 3,000 stoves sold in the first 9 months."

Grace, a local resident who uses an efficient cookstove says,“I feel happy with it. It functions well and lasts a lot longer than the traditional stove that I used previously. It saves my family money on charcoal and I would not want to change back to using the old stove that I once used.”


Read the full profile on: Uganda Efficient Stoves

'Creation Of New Technologies Will Hold The Key To Clean Energy'

A series of innovative technologies hold the promise of providing the deprived access to clean energy. At the forefront are cook stove manufacturers such as Envirofit and Score Stoves, says Just Means News Writer Sarah Brown. "In CSR terms, the creation of new technologies will hold the key to clean energy for the developing world."

Envirofit, a manufacturer of clean energy cookstoves started as a result of CSR partnership between the Shell Foundation, Colorado State University's Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory, and the materials Science and Technology Division at Oak Ridge National Labs.

Envirofit has taken up the cause of clean cookstoves as their responsibility towards the society as according to them, Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) currently claims the lives of 1.5 million people a year worldwide, or one person every 20 seconds. Women and children make up 85% of these deaths due to their increased exposure in the home.

Brown notes that compared to traditional cooking fires, these cookstoves reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 80%, use up to 60% less fuel and reduce cooking cycle time by 50% .

Another Project, the Score Stove, a joint CSR venture between experts from across the world to develop a biomass-powered generator aims to assist easy access to energy in rural communities. It has multiple uses ranging from cooking, refrigeration and electricity generation from thermal waves emitted during cooking.

Tests have been carried out in Nepal and Kenya to investigate how the Score Stove works in practice. This has helped to hone the design and performance of the generator to ensure it is low-cost and high efficiency.

In order to make it viable, the target cost of the generator is £20 per household, based on the production of a million units.

Photo Courtesy: Score Research;  Envirofit

Read the full story on: CSR and new technology for the developing world

Indian Government Constitutes Core Group On Biomass Cooking Stoves

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has constituted a Core Group to interact with concerned stakeholders and to review the progress and take further steps to expand development and deployment of cook-stoves in the country, as per a Press Release by the Government of India Press Information Bureau on December 28, 2010.

In addition, the Ministry has sanctioned projects for strengthening four Improved Cook Stove Test Centers for development and modification of standards and testing of cook-stoves.

According to the release, a project was taken up by the Ministry to assess status of various types of improved cook-stoves currently available, their suitability and delivery mechanisms for deployment through Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and The Energy Resources Institute (TERI).

Based on the recommendation of the project, a pilot scale project on ‘Pilot Field Testing and Evaluation of Community Sized Biomass Cook-stoves’ has been taken up recently for demonstration of community size cook-stoves in eight identified states of the country.

Read the Press Release on: Biomass Cooking Stoves