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Stovers:
Yesterday, I spent a fun
afternoon with several of the students working with Dan Kammen and Kirk
Smith. Most of the time was spent with Robert Bailis who is an experienced
biomass and stoves researcher himself. Robert had been planning on doing
his thesis work in Zimbabwe but was forced out some months ago by the political
unrest. He may transfer his work to Kenya. Robert was one of the
authors of the "global climate change report" prepared for the Marrakech meeting
- mentioned on this list by Robert on October 24 and earlier by
Dan.
I found the report (Clean Energy
for Development and Economic Growth: Biomass and Other Renewable Energy
Options to Meet Energy and Development Needs in Poor Nations) to be very
informative. It is 94 pages long and about a third is of direct relevance
to our group. There are excellent statistics on emissions of all sorts -
especially from two recent papers:
Kirk Smith et al:
"Greenhouse Implications of Household stoves: An Analysis for India, Ann.
Rev. of Energy and the Environment 2000. Vol. 25: 741-763. Robert gave
me a copy and I will give a later summary after I digest it. Good figures,
many types of emissions discussed.
J. Zhang et al " Greenhouse
gases and other airborne pollutants from household stoves in China: a database
for emission factors" Atmospheric Environment vol 34 (2000)
4537-4549. Same need to digest more fully.
I urge "stoves" list members
interested in emissions and policy topics to take Robert up on his offer to mail
a copy. This is not a how-to-build-better-stoves book, but there are
many useful leads on the characteristics of traditional stoves.
The report is in six parts: 1.
Energy and the Poor (16 pp), 2. Biomass Energy for household use: Resources and
impacts (10 pp), 3. Biomass energy beyond the household: Scaling up
(11 pp); 4. Biomass energy conversion technologies (7 pp);
5. Renewable energy technologies: Markets and costs (11
pp); 6. Biomass, bioenergy, and climate change mitigation (12
pp). There is a several page conclusion and 6 pages of references and
18 pages on 6 case studies (one about Elsen Karstad's chardust activity in
Nairobi).
Here is a sentence I liked
relative to stoves near the end of their section 2: "While
difficulties exist in pursuing a course of research, the alternative, to
do nothing, is unacceptable."
In sum, I
enjoyed the visit and then reading my own copy of the report by Dan Kammen,
Robert Bailis and Antonia Herzog. I recommend it to others as a good
concise summary of where we are in the development of better stoves (at the
beginning).
Ron
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