Andrew and list
1. I found Andrew’s first mention on “scary tipping points”
interesting, but was not going to respond until Andrew turned the subject to
cookstoves. Because of my long term interest in PV, however, I earlier sought
and found the Telegraph’s (July 28, 2014) base material from Citigroup:
http://tecsol.blogs.com/files/citi--rapport-%C3%A9nergie-08-14.pdf
The 10% of that report on PV is backed up by a much longer 2013 PV article by
same author:
https://ir.citi.com/2kNY%2bEwkqKWZyfvy2LsQnHjRB5MYkqf8duslCBaL1XHgDsHFitjI4A%3d%3d
I support Citi’s very positive view that solar (mostly PV) is (finally)
happening rapidly. I support Mark’s view (below) that this is positive - not a
“Geo” problem.
2. Re stoves: Andrew said today in part: “…cooking stoves, ….. a
big source of BC and won’t be affected by a transition to solar.”
As a first moderator of a now 19-year-old (biomass) cooking stoves list, I feel
a need to respond (only here from a “Geo” perspective): First, it is true
that the BC contribution from stoves is big, but that from diesel trucks is
considerably larger. Both sources need to be improved and can be. Biomass
cook stoves have the advantage of avoiding fossil emissions - which is good.
But most are harmful in a public health sense (almost 4 million stove-causedt
deaths a year) and the production of charcoal for cooking is rapidly ruining
many of the world’s natural forests (illegally generally).
There is a growing use of charcoal-making stoves - with a major reason
for that growth a “Geo” reason - char placed in soil (biochar) is a CDR
technology. This can possibly lead to a wedge - but we still haven’t got real
growth started there. Design improvements appear regularly and there is still
hope - as such stoves certainly save time and can conceivably save money for
cooking - a major expense for the very poor. Their main disadvantage is they
are batch.
3. The main reason for this note though is to pick up on the last part
of Andrew’s short remark. That is - there very well could be a cook stove
transition to solar. This topic obviously is of interest to the stove
community, but should be for all of us, since half the world is cooking on
inefficient stoves and that needs change. The last part of my message is an
August 8 Science editorial on Andrew’s solar/cooking topic, by Berkeley Prof.
Kirk Smith (who I have visited several times). It is included below in full,
quoting from Kirk’s own blog this month.
Before going to that blog and Kirk’s Science editorial (actually two
are below), let me offer several observations - based on my overlapping
interests in stoves and climate:
- Most biomass cook stove users cannot now afford solar (or other)
electricity for lighting or cell-phone charging - usages that can be solved
with a few watts. Cooking will require at least hundreds of watts. Subsidies
may well be appropriate (advocated by Kirk), but they seem unlikely in most
countries. This is to say that cooking with biomass is apt to be with us a
long time - mostly for economic reasons.
- More attention should be on solar cookers - less costly and better
than any cooking alternative - in a climate sense. As with solar electricity,
there is an intermittency issue, but we should be developing and encouraging
hybrid approaches, using solar whenever possible, but not solely. (Big
international solar cooking conference in Sacramento a month ago.)
- Cooking with liquid fuels is another important option. These need
not be fossil. Some can be made with charcoal (for “Geo” purposes). See the
second Kirk Smith 2002 editorial (below) on this fuel side of cooking (Kirk has
changed his focus - but not his very worthy motivations). The company “Cool
Planet” has a potential fuel/biochar role here.
- I am hoping that char-making stoves will help show the “Geo”
sequestration advantages of biochar - and thereby advance multiple wedges. So,
if subsidies appear for remote electric cooking to replace biomass cooking, I
urge the same for “Geo” approaches to cooking (that will mostly have a biochar
character).
- Kirk is urging electricity, not solar electricity. But solar
electricity is by far the cheapest approach for small amounts of electricity
and cheapest in many developing countries for large-scale electricity. Biomass
is apt to be cheaper than solar when emphasis needs to be on 24-hour
availability, ability to follow load, and costs. There is reason to believe
that generating electricity using a biomass pyrolysis approach can be cheaper
than a combustion approach - especially if we factor in the global need for
CDR. PV has many proponents (including me) for climate reasons - but none I
know of for CDR.
- In sum, I am suggesting here that Prof. Smith has overlooked a
possible strong competitor to replacing cooking via biomass by cooking with
electricity: charcoal-making (CDR) stoves.
Ron
Apologies for length, but this seems to be a new topic. The remainder of my
portion of this note is from Prof. Smith:
Every Year of the Horse, it seems, I publish an editorial in Science. The
second in the series came out today -- In Praise of Power -- why electric
cooking needs to be part of the strategy for reducing the health impacts of
household air pollution from solid cookfuels in poor countries. And,
conversely, how considering the associated health benefits would greatly expand
the benefit package used to justify electrification investments in poor
countries. This includes more conventional electric cooking appliances, such
as the rice cooker and hot water pot, but also leap frog technologies, namely
induction cookstoves. Not clear yet how much they can penetrate into rural
areas as electricity becomes reliable, but recent evidence in India and China
indicates the potential may be great.
This follows my 2002 editorial, attached, In Praise of Petroleum, which made
the same point about LPG that provision of clean cooking services to the poor
with fossil fuels would have a minimal impact on greenhouse gas emissions
globally, and potentially immense health benefits.
Below is the new editorial, which can be downloaded in full from the website
below. As always with such venues, the editors take many liberties with the
text and I hope you find the result at least coherent. (for example, they
added the question mark to the title of the previous one, it actually coming
out as "In Praise of Petroleum?" At least they did not do so this time, but
they did refuse to reference the old one for some unfathomable reason.) I also
apologize that they do not allow acknowledgements of those who provided
comments on previous drafts. And only a minimum of citations. Thanks to those
of you that provided comments and have done some of the work related to this
that was cited in my original.
Best/k
In praise of power
– Kirk R. Smith, Science, vol 345: 603, Aug 8, 2014
The importance of energy for development is underscored by the United Nations
declaration of
2014 to 2024 as the Decade of Sustainable Energy
for All. Among the goals is to provide universal
access to electricity and clean cooking. Each
laudable in itself, the two goals actually overlap.
About 2.8 billion people in developing countries
rely on biomass for cooking, a number that has
not changed in 25 years. The consequence of the resulting
pollution is an estimated 3.9 million premature
deaths annually. Over the decades, development
organizations have focused on improving the efficiency
of cookstoves that use local biomass fuels, and more
recently on trying to reduce the resulting exposure
to household air pollution. However, it
is extremely difficult to burn biomass cleanly enough to meet guidelines to
protect health.
To supply the 1.4 billion
who do not have access to
electricity, most attention
has focused on supporting
relatively small, albeit
critical, household uses,
particularly lighting, but
there are other important
benefits. It is sometimes
ignored that electricity
is part of the solution for
clean cooking. In the rich
world, electric cooking
devices include a wide
range of appliances that are starting to appear in poor
areas, such as rice cookers, water pots, microwaves, and
specialized devices often tailored to local foods. These
do common tasks conveniently and efficiently with no
household pollution, and can be expected to become increasingly
important as electrification progresses. Rice
cooker production in China, for example, has grown
annually at more than 20% over 15 years.
The availability of inexpensive portable induction
cookstoves—a leapfrog technology that is safer and
more efficient than traditional electric or gas stoves—is
shifting the balance more toward electric cooking. This
is occurring mainly in cities because of cost and power
availability, but these constraints are changing as electrification
expands and prices for induction stoves fall with
scale. In India, more than 20 domestic and international
companies are selling these stoves, and the projected
growth rate is 35% a year for the next 5 years; in China,
annual sales are more than 40 million.
More must be done to boost the growth rate of electric
cooking, such as targeted subsidies and the development
of appliances that are designed and priced for rural areas.
Ecuador, for example, is working to install induction
stoves in every household in the country. Along with advanced
biomass combustion, biogas, liquefied petroleum
gas, natural gas, and other clean fuels, electric cooking
needs to be directly incorporated into modernization
plans for the world’s
poorest people.
For those worried about CO2 emissions from power plants,
consider that modest
efficiency measures that
reduce 3% of electric
power consumption in
rich countries (which
are also largely supplied
by coal) would “free”
enough electricity to
supply half of all biomass
households with induction
stoves. New supplies
of electricity would produce
far less than a 1%
increase in global CO2
emissions.* It is not the
cooking of the poor that
threatens the climate.
Switching from solid to clean forms of energy can bring
more health benefits than nearly any other modernization,
including clean water and sanitation.† It is too early
to tell whether induction cooking can be successfully promoted
in biomass-using rural areas, but not too early to
predict that electric cooking appliances will be attractive
to people as electricity becomes more reliable. Although
in one sense the most mundane of energy issues, given
that billions do not use modern fuels in their households
and suffer great impacts on health, welfare, and the local
environment as a result, finding solutions for providing
electricity has important implications for global health
and sustainable development.
Kirk R. Smith is a professor of Global
Environmental Health at the
University of California,
Berkeley, and
a visiting professor in the
111 Program at Peking University.
---------------------------
Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD
Professor of Global Environmental Health
Director of the Global Health and Environment Program
School of Public Health
747 University Hall
University of California
Berkeley, California, 94720-7360
phone 1-510-643-0793; fax 642-5815
[email protected]
http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/krsmith/
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https://ir.citi.com/2kNY%2bEwkqKWZyfvy2LsQnHjRB5MYkqf8duslCBaL1XHgDsHFitjI4A%3d%3d
On Aug 23, 2014, at 7:15 AM, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote:
> Forwarded at Mark's request.
>
> The rebuttal is interesting, but doesn't directly consider the issue of
> cooking stoves, which are a big source of BC and won't be affected by a
> transition to solar.
>
> A
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Lawrence, Mark" <[email protected]>
> Date: 23 Aug 2014 14:32
> Subject: Scary tipping points
> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
> Cc:
>
>
>
> Hi Andrew,
>
>
>
> I read your post “The scary tipping point nobody talks about here” on the
> Google Groups discussion.
>
>
>
> Your concern is that once we switch from fossil fuels to solar, we will
> suddenly no longer have the emissions of SO2 which are contributing to the
> current “masking” cooling effect (which is of the same rough magnitude, but
> in the opposite direction, as enhanced CO2 since pre-industrial times).
>
>
>
> This is a valid concern.
>
>
>
> However, at the same time, there are other short-lived climate-forcing
> pollutants besides SO2, which warm instead of cooling. In particular, black
> carbon (in soot), methane and ozone add up to a total warming which is
> comparable to CO2 (and thus offsets the planetary mean of aerosol particle
> direct and indirect cooling). A lot of soot and other SLCPs comes from diesel
> buses and trucks, and from biofuel and biomass burning, and in some places
> still from power plants, and of course major sources of methane are leakage
> and emissions during coal and oil mining. All of these should also get
> replaced by solar, so that we should simultaneously see a reduction in the
> warming by the other SLCPs, which on a planetary average will roughly balance
> the “unmasked” warming due to reduced SO2 emissions. (Of course these are
> regionally differing, so it is only the planetary average that is balanced,
> but while the total global warming is still < 1C, that’s not going to be very
> noticeable in weather patterns in most places.)
>
>
>
> So we can confidently and comfortably head towards the “solar power
> revolution” that you envision without worrying about it causing a sudden call
> for SRM implementation.
>
>
>
> I hope that helps clarify things. I would appreciate if you could post this
> on the google groups on my behalf (I have misplaced my password and am
> leaving for vacation tomorrow).
>
>
>
> Thanks for your contributions at the CEC14,
>
>
>
> --mark
>
>
>
>
> --
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To unsubscribe from this list go to:https://calmail.berkeley.edu/manage/list/reminder/[email protected] On Aug 23, 2014, at 7:15 AM, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote:
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Science Editorial 02.pdf
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