Dear Friends
The project described at http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/01/22/carbon-finance-plays-its-part- in-empowering-women-and-saving-lives/ discusses the LPG project in Darfur that has received Carbon Financing. Two things stand out in this, the first being the cost of getting gas to people over a long road. Our recent investigations into the use patterns for LPG in Indonesia (where similar transport issues arise in no small part because they have more than 10,000 islands) which shows that while cooking is universally done by 'we cook with LPG' households, they still use biomass to heat water. This has led to a new class of stove called 'water heaters' which are intended to be much higher in efficiency than a cooking stove and which need fewer features like a good turn down ratio. Let's keep an eye on that space. Second, it is noted in the beginning of the article that for every ten trees cut down, only 2 are planted. This demonstrates that the fuel supply is not impacted by cooking only, it is impacted by poor resource management and the long term cure is to plant 3 trees for every one cut, as is the norm in Western Canada. It is also worth noting that the calculation of support for this (subsidised) biomass-to-LPG switch is calculate on the GWP (global warming potential) of CO2. The IPCC has recently cut the estimated GWP to half of their former estimate but it still remains about double the range given in most of the papers published in the past 12 months. This reduction cuts the funding potential for the project in half. Developers of such projects must keep an eye on how this market is developing and trending. Wherever possible, make sure your projects are viable without such funding. Where that is not possible, make sure the contract is not depending on a 'market price' ie make it a contract at a fixed price and assume that when it is over, there will be no carry-on obligations based on a future unknown price. In other words, use the money for seed funding of a viable enterprise. A good example of that would be the establishment of reforestation projects in the Darfur region where unsustainable harvesting has been going on for decades. As the Chadian example of local management of the resource has shown, this is quite possible if the permissions and regulation are in the right hands. Putting control in the 'wrong hands' or making the charcoal business illegal always leads to disaster as no one stands to legally benefit from the proper management of the resources. Regards Crispin
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