Fuelling sawdust stoves with jatropha fruit coats

May 2, 2013 · 0 comments

Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments, Volume 2, June 2013, Pages 12–18

Fuelling sawdust stoves with jatropha fruit coats

Lars Kåre Grimsby, et al.

Jatropha fruit coats constitute a substantial byproduct in the jatropha harvest. Due to its texture the fruit coat is unsuitable as fuel in firewood stoves but could be applicable in sawdust stoves. Jatropha fruit coats were tested as fuel in a sawdust stove with a controlled water boiling test and among households that were involved in jatropha harvesting. Five kilograms jatropha seeds leave 4 kg fruit coats; enough to fill three sawdust stoves. The stove’s high firepower (3.1 kW) lasted less than an hour making it unsuitable for hard-boiled food. The stove did cook softer foods and was usable in combination with the three stone fire.

Emissions were 20 mg m−3 CO and 145 μm m−3 PM10 24-h mean. CO-levels were below WHO recommendations, PM10 levels above. Jatropha fruits are harvestable in large quantities only during seasons. This, together with a difficult market for jatropha seeds may limit availability of fruit coats. Although jatropha fruit coats in sawdust stove did not replace the three stone fire completely, the sawdust stove could complement other stoves in a multiple fuel use regime in areas where jatropha fruit coats are available in abundance and for free.

Proceedings of the Clean Cooking Forum 2013

April 30, 2013 · 0 comments

Dear Forum Participants,

With the Clean Cooking Forum 2013 behind us, we look forward to receiving your feedback. If you haven’t already, we ask that you take a few minutes to fill out an online survey so that we can continue to improve upon both content and logistics of future events. 

We are pleased to announce that all post-Forum materials are now available online to view and download on the Proceedings page at www.cleancooking2013.org, including:

  • A Forum Progress Report (hard copy available upon request)
  • Presentations and notes from plenary, breakout, and intensive learning sessions
  • Posters displayed during the poster session
  • Photos taken throughout the week
  • An updated participant roster

Don’t forget that you can stay connected and continue the conversations started at the Forum on the Alliance’s online community!

Best Regards,

Clean Cooking Forum 2013 Planning Team

Charcoal, livelihoods, and poverty reduction: Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

April 29, 2013 · 0 comments

Charcoal, livelihoods, and poverty reduction: Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa. Energy for Sustainable Development, Volume 17, Issue 2, April 2013, Pages 127–137.

Leo C., et al.

More than 80% of urban households in sub-Saharan Africa use charcoal as their main source of cooking energy, and the demand is likely to increase for several decades. Charcoal is also a major source of income for rural households in areas with access to urban markets. We review studies of the socioeconomic implications of charcoal production and use, focusing holistically on the role of charcoal in poverty alleviation based on four dimensions of poverty defined by the World Bank: (i) material deprivation, (ii) poor health and education, (iii) vulnerability and exposure to risk, and (iv) voicelessness and powerlessness.

We draw conclusions from household-level studies to better understand the determinants of participation in charcoal production and sale, and of urban household demand. Poorer households are more likely to participate in the production and sale of charcoal but their participation is mainly a safety net to supplement other income. Although charcoal production contributes to poverty reduction through alternative income-generation opportunities, it can also undermine production of ecosystem services, agricultural production, and human health.

Reducing rural household dependence on charcoal requires coordinated policies providing alternative income opportunities for farmers, affordable alternative energy sources for urban households, and more efficient and sustainable approaches for producing and using charcoal. For future research, we emphasize the importance of large-N panel datasets to better understand the net benefits of charcoal production as a poverty-reduction strategy.

Exploring the consequences of climate change for indoor air quality

April 29, 2013 · 1 comment

Exploring the consequences of climate change for indoor air quality. Environmental Research Letters, 8(1) 2013.

William W Nazaroff.

Climate change will affect the concentrations of air pollutants in buildings. The resulting shifts in human exposure may influence public health. Changes can be anticipated because of altered outdoor pollution and also owing to changes in buildings effected in response to changing climate. Three classes of factors govern indoor pollutant levels in occupied spaces: (a) properties of pollutants; (b) building factors, such as the ventilation rate; and (c) occupant behavior. Diversity of indoor conditions influences the public health significance of climate change.

Potentially vulnerable subpopulations include not only the young and the infirm but also those who lack resources to respond effectively to changing conditions. Indoor air pollutant levels reflect the sum of contributions from indoor sources and from outdoor pollutants that enter with ventilation air. Pollutant classes with important indoor sources include the byproducts of combustion, radon, and volatile and semivolatile organic compounds. Outdoor pollutants of special concern include particulate matter and ozone. To ensure good indoor air quality it is important first to avoid high indoor emission rates for all pollutants and second to ensure adequate ventilation. A third factor is the use of air filtration or air cleaning to achieve further improvements where warranted.

Climate Change – Boiling Point, Issue 61, 2013

April 29, 2013 · 0 comments

Climate Change: Adaptation, Resilience and Energy Security. Boiling Point, Issue 61, 2013.

It is becoming ever more important that energy programmes are reliable against changes in the climate. Ways of providing people access to energy whilst minimising impact on the environment and natural resources are now considered vital for sustainable development.

This edition of Boiling Point seeks to address some of the challenges in making this provision, and it presents examples of related initiatives being implemented and explored to enhance the adaptive capacity, resilience and energy security for households and communities against climate change.

Contents:

Editorial: Climate Change: Adaptation, Resilience and Energy Security 1
Enhancing resilience through energy efficiency:Experience from Tajikistan 2
Kambulakwao Chakanga, Heike Volkmer

Transforming household energy practices to reduce climate risks: Charcoal use in Lusaka, Zambia 5
Aaron Atteridge

Integrating renewable energy into resilient livelihoods: Christian Aid’s experience 8
Richard Ewbank

Emerging institutional perspectives: A case study on managing bamboo resources for charcoal production in Nagaland, India 11
Jay Anand, Dr. Appadurai Arivudai Nambi

Building climate resilience through community based energy security 17
Jim Jarvie, David Nicholson

Low Carbon Development and energy access in Africa 24
Haruna Gujba, Yacob Mulugetta, Jabavu Nkomo, Youba Sokona

A microenvironmental modelling methodology to assess children’s exposure to indoor air pollution

April 29, 2013 · 0 comments

A microenvironmental modelling methodology to assess children’s exposure to indoor air pollution in Porto, Portugal.

PTBS BRANCO, et al.

Abstract – Assessing children’s exposure to indoor air pollution is an emergent area of research, and also an increasing political and scientific concern. During their daily routine, children move through different locations (microenvironments), where they are exposed to different levels of air pollutants that can cause adverse effects on their health, like asthma and other respiratory diseases. Several methods and approaches are available to assess personal exposure.

This paper presents: i) a review of the study designs and input data requirements needed to assess air pollutant levels on microenvironments (home indoor, home outdoor, school indoor, school outdoor, in transit); and ii) the microenvironmental modelling methodology developed to assess children’sexposure to indoor air pollution in Porto Metropolitan Area (North of Portugal). This methodology will allow the assessment of children’s exposure, as well as contribute to identify the main pollutants influencing exposure and their sources. Scientific positive contribution and population raise awareness are additional benefits from this study.

A Simple Solution to Air Pollution from Wood-Burning Cookstoves

April 25, 2013 · 0 comments

A Simple Solution to Air Pollution from Wood-Burning Cookstoves | Source: Science Daily, April 24, 2013 |

Apr. 24, 2013 — Billions of people worldwide burn animal dung, crop residues, wood and charcoal to cook their meals. And the chemicals produced and inhaled sicken or kill millions. At particular risk are women who prepare their families’ food and children 5-years-old or younger.

Up to now, most interventions have focused on improving the cookstove to lower emissions. And that would be fine, if there were enough improved cookstoves to go around. But there aren’t. In 2012, only 2.5 million improved cookstoves were distributed, improving the household air pollution situation for exactly one-half of 1 percent of the world’s biomass burners.

Wood-burning cookstoves cause air pollution and health problems. (Credit: Michigan Technological University)

So an interdisciplinary team of Michigan Technological University students took a different tack. They decided to look for ways to improve the cooking environment, not just the stove. And they found a low-cost, highly effective way to reduce the impact of cooking over biomass fires without designing and installing high-tech, costly stoves.

Better ventilation.

The cookstove project was born in small town on the Guatemalan border with Mexico, where Michigan Tech environmental engineering graduate student Kelli Whelan was working on an Engineers Without Borders project. She noticed that the kitchen of a family who had built an attic to insulate their house from a hot aluminum roof was much cooler than others she had visited, although they all used the same kind of wood-burning cookstove.

“That made me wonder if the temperature difference helped clear the smoke out, either by a draft or the greater temperature differential between the fire and the surrounding space,” she explains.

When she returned to Michigan Tech, Whelan and several fellow environmental engineering graduate students started work on a project to explore the situation. They built both a working model of a biomass cookstove and a computer model to test different kitchen and cooking conditions.

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EcoZoom builds a market for clean cookstoves in developing economies

April 23, 2013 · 0 comments

EcoZoom builds a market for clean cookstoves in developing economies | Source: Christian Science Monitor, Apr 22, 2013 |

In impoverished areas, people spend $1 to $2 per day to burn charcoal or wood to cook food, a huge expensive for them. A clean-burning cookstove cuts that cost by more than half.

EcoZoom is a for-profit certified B Corporation based inPortland, Oregon, and a client of Mercy Corps Northwest, working to solve this problem by making clean cookstoves accessible and affordable in developing countries.

Global Envision interviewed Chief of Operations Phil Ferranto on the challenges EcoZoom faces in convincing people to invest in clean cookstoves, developing a market for cookstoves in developing economies, and what sets EcoZoom apart as a socially-minded for-profit business.

Zohra Bensemra/Reuters/File

EcoZoom’s mission is to get clean cookstoves into the hands of cooks in both the developing world and developed markets. Can you tell us a little about how EcoZoom’s business model manages to market cookstoves to consumers who regularly choose to spend money on other products? Who are these consumers?

Our business model is to partner with key stakeholders throughout the value chain by setting up a sustainable commercial market. As I see it, there are three main categories of stove users: relief, development, and commercial stove users.

Sometimes we’ll start with somebody in a refugee camp whose life has been uprooted. Usually in that case we’ll work with an NGO who really knows the camp and its dynamics to make sure we find the right product for the camp – something that’s durable, something that makes sense economically for the NGO, and something that can be distributed to enough stakeholders within the refugee camp to avoid inner conflict.

Our second focus is on development markets, which are usually in rural settings where people are either finding fuel or wood, or maybe using a traditional [wood-fired] stove or a mixture of cooking, heating, and lighting solutions. In these cases individuals may not have a constant income stream or aren’t spending enough money on fuel to justify the purchase of a cookstove outright.

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How many replicate tests do I need? – Variability of cookstove performance and emissions has implications for obtaining useful results

April 23, 2013 · 0 comments

How many replicate tests do I need? – Variability of cookstove performance and emissions has implications for obtaining useful results, 2013.

Yungang Wang, et al. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, One Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720

Abstract
Almost half of the world’s population still cooks on biomass cookstoves of poor efficiency and primitive design, such as three stone fires (TSF). Emissions from biomass cookstoves contribute to adverse health effects and climate change. A number of “improved cookstoves” with higher energy efficiency and lower emissions have been designed and promoted across the world. During the design development, and for selection of a stove for dissemination, the stove performance and emissions are commonly evaluated, communicated and compared using the arithmetic average of replicate tests made using a standardized laboratory-based test, commonly the water boiling test (WBT). However, published literature shows different WBT results reported from different laboratories for the same stove technology. Also, there is no agreement in the literature on how many replicate tests should be performed to ensure “significance” in the reported average performance. This matter has not received attention in the rapidly growing literature on stoves, and yet is crucial for estimating and communicating the performance of a stove, and for comparing the performance between stoves.

We present results of statistical analyses using data from a number of replicate tests of performance and emission of the Berkeley-Darfur Stove (BDS) and the TSF under well-controlled laboratory conditions. We
observed moderate variability in the test results for the TSF and BDS when measuring several characteristics. Here we focus on two as illustrative: time-to-boil and PM2.5 (particulate matter less than or equal to 2.5 micrometers in diameter) emissions. We demonstrate that interpretation of the results comparing these stoves could be misleading if only a small number of replicates had been conducted. We then describe a practical approach, useful to both stove testers and designers, to assess the number of replicates needed to obtain useful data. Caution should be exercised in attaching high credibility to results based on only a few replicates of cookstove performance and emissions. Stove designers, testers, program implementers and decision makers should all benefit from improved awareness of the importance of adequate number of replicates required to produce practically useful test data.

Assessing the Climate Impacts of Cookstove Projects: Issues in Emissions Accounting (policy brief)

April 23, 2013 · 0 comments

Assessing the Climate Impacts of Cookstove Projects: Issues in Emissions Accounting (policy brief), 2013.

Michael Lazarus and Carrie Lee. Senior ScientistStockholm Environment Institute

This policy brief, based on an SEI working paper, focuses on a key precondition for cookstove projects to obtain carbon finance and to ensure environmental integrity: credible, scientifically robust methodologies to measure and verify emission reductions. 

Carbon finance is gaining appeal as a way to scale-up improved cookstove projects while also meeting the need for standardization and accountability. Researchers have found the potential volume of credits could exceed 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year.

To be viable and ensure environmental integrity, these projects need credible, scientifically robust methodologies to measure and verify emission reductions. The authors review existing methodologies, drawing on a literature review as well as interviews with market actors and technical experts, and identify gaps that need to be filled.

Cookstove projects can generate offsets through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and from three voluntary offset programs: the Gold Standard, the American Carbon Registry, and the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). To date, all but one project has used the CDM, the Gold Standard, or both.

Emission reductions from cookstove projects are calculated as the product of the amount of woody biomass saved, the fraction that is considered non-renewable biomass, the net calorific value of the biomass, and an emission factor for the fuel used. Each of these factors presents technical challenges that would benefit from further methodology work.

The authors note that cookstove projects’ climate benefits are not limited to carbon dioxide; they can also significantly reduce emissions of black carbon, carbon monoxide, and total non-methane hydrocarbons. However, these benefits are not yet quantified by the methodologies, nor can credits be earned for them.

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