OPINION
- Seeing REDD.
* Climate change is likely to adversely affect the poorest people in the developing world. But solutions like REDD could end up hurting them as well.
The big wins at last year’s Cancun COP meeting was 1) that the talks did not break down, and 2) that a deal was reached to move forward on REDD.
[The REDD program, which stands for Reduced Emissions through avoided Deforestation and Degradation, aims to encourage forest-rich countries — especially developing countries in Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa — to reduce their rate of forest destruction. Scientists estimate that about a fifth of all C02 emissions come from global deforestation. For reference, based on emissions from deforestation alone, Indonesia ranks up there with China and the US in terms of emissions.]
Compensating forest owners — be they communities, individuals, or nation-states — who choose to preserve their C02-soaking trees is the right thing to do.
The trouble with REDD
The vast majority of the solid biomass fuel consumed in the developing world today is collected from publicly-owned, forested lands. This means that urban and rural communities that depend on wood and charcoal are likely to be hit hardest should local and federal governments decide to enforce penalties against illegal harvesting and production of charcoal and woodfuel. A number of African countries have already experimented with outlawing charcoal production to no avail. What’s more, the IEA estimates solid biomass fuel consumption will continue to increase over the next two decades. We’ve discussed the potential conflict between REDD and forest-dependent societies in the past here. The argument was recently revived in the news based on a report produced by a team of African, British, and US researchers.
REDD is undoubtedly a well-intentioned program, but we’ve yet to see viable solutions that could reconcile this conflict.
So what happens to the 3 billion people that depend on woodfuel and charcoal for their daily fuel?
Somehow, it strikes us as unlikely that the first priority for governments deriving income from REDD will be to replace wood and charcoal-burning stoves with LPG or other more modern fuels. That’s okay because other solutions exist. They include more efficient production of charcoal, the largescale adoption of fuel-efficient wood- and charcoal-burning cookstoves, better land management practices that encourage the sustainable production of solid biomass fuels, the use of discarded agricultural waste for fuel, and smarter policies that recognize the role that solid biomass fuels can play in boosting domestic and productive energy.
Forest-rich developing countries need to re-think the role of solid biomass fuels in their energy balance.
Europe’s growing appetite for solid biomass for electricity generation should be a clear signal to developing countries that they, too, need to rethink the role of solid biomass as a renewable fuel. The problem is that, right now, the consumption of wood and charcoal far outpaces the replenishment rate of this renewable fuel. Considering the CO2, black carbon, and other GHG emissions associated with the traditional production and consumption of wood and charcoal, it wouldn’t be surprising if burning solid biomass turns out to be as bad a burning fossil fuels.
J. Kim Chaix
Editor
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French 
Help, this is not my world, and I’m not up on all of the terms! Is solid biomass fuel just wood? Is it charcoal that’s been made of wood? Can it be made other ways? And is “sustainable production of solid biomass fuel” something like a well managed forest?
Then, at the end, I know the world doesn’t work in black and white, but I’m confused by your suggestion that, “it wouldn’t be surprising if burning solid biomass turns out to be as bad a burning fossil fuels.” How can we know? Do you mean that it will be if the forests are not properly managed, since we need the forest to absorb the CO2 produced by making the fuel?
Dear Inger,
Sometimes I get carried away and forget that not everyone is obsessed with this issue as I am, so your questions are very pertinent.
Solid biomass refers to a solid form of biomass used for fuel, like wood, charcoal, animal dung, pellets, charcoal briquettes,… you get the idea. Liquid biomass are the liquid forms of fuel such as ethanol, methanol, and others derived mostly from plants such as corn, sugar cane and increasingly many other types of crops.
Part of the reason we want to distinguish between solid and liquid is that, as you are aware, in the US and Europe there is controversy over the truly renewable and green nature of these fuels. That is, do they really help cut down on greenhouse gas emissions? And how does intense cultivation of these fuels affect world prices, especially in developing countries. So we want to make sure people don’t confuse both types of biomass fuels.
With regards to the question of charcoal. That’s the big question. Right now, charcoal in the developing world is largely unsustainably consumed and inefficiently produced. Our aim with our International Conference on Charcoal is to set a roadmap that would move charcoal towards a more sustainable path, one where the consumption matches the replenishment rate of the resource, in this case, the trees used to make the fuel.
We also want to bring efficiency to traditional charcoal-making technologies because right now the process is only about 20% efficient. That means that 80% of the wood’s potential energy is lost in heat and in unprocessed (mostly greenhouse) gases. The traditional charcoal-making process also releases significant amounts of something called “black carbon” which consist of tiny particles that contribute significantly to climate change.
With regards to my provocative statement comparing the effects of charcoal for fuel vs using fossil fuels, the big difference is that charcoal can be made to be a very clean burning renewable fuel. This is one reasons for the accelerated growth of solid biomass fuels to generate electricity in Europe. Done right, it can be an important source of renewable fuel for many countries, especially developing countries in the tropical belt. Unlike fossil fuels, we don’t need to invest billions and billions to come up with carbon capture technology for power generation. The technology is available already to a very clean burning fuel.
There are a bunch of other reasons why using solid biomass fuels makes a lot of sense but we’ll have to leave that for another time! 😉
Please come back an ask questions!
Warm regards,
Kim
is your website supported on safari browser.because i tried using it through safari but the sidebar goes out of the page.
Dear Madge,
I’m very sorry you are finding it difficult to load our website on Safari. I’ve just open the site on Safari (I’m running Mac OS 10.5.8 and Safari Version 5.0.5 (5533.21.1) )
Can you confirm your OS and Safari version? That way we can better troubleshoot the problem.
Thank you for alerting us to this issue.
Sincerely,
J. Kim Chaix