Cooking Up a Solution to Haiti’s Deforestation: Biochar to the Rescue?
Instead of chopping down trees to cook with, Haitians need only biomass waste to heat Lucia biochar stoves.
When natural disasters strike, it only exacerbates pre-existing environmental problems. Case-in-point: Haiti’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake in January that has called greater attention to this impoverished country’s most devastating threat to conservation efforts – deforestation. So in the rebuilding efforts, it would seem a prime time to introduce clean energy alternatives to chopping down trees for cook stoves – biochar.
Biochar is the end-product created through the burning of biomass under oxygen-free conditions. Instead of relying on the logging of forests for fuel, the biochar creation process known as pyrolysis can utilize twigs, and plant and animal waste.
World Stoves CEO Nathaniel Mulcahy sees biochar as the ideal solution for Haiti where they currently burn the equivalent of 30 million trees a year. In fact,this practice is the primary reason 98 percent of Haiti’s tree cover is gone, with just 100,000 acres of forest left!
BIOCHAR TO HAITI’S RESCUE?
In partnership with the NGO International Lifeline Fund and a private Haitian company, World Stoves has a production center in Port-Au-Prince with the goal of:
“Producing approximately 2,000 ‘Lucia’ emergency stoves for institutional and household use during its first month of operation alone. These super-efficient woodless stoves, which are … fueled entirely with agricultural waste such as twigs, groundnut shells, rice husk and dung.
“At a cost that can be brought down to as little as about $6 per unit, the Lucia emergency stove will enable a woman to cook for a 5-person household using an average of just 300 grams (about a handful) of fuel per meal.
“Furthermore, as a result of the pryolytic cooking process it employs, the Lucia stove creates biochar – a substance that functions as a highly effective fertilizer and that can be sold on the market, thereby turning the stove into an income generator for each of its users.”
BIOCHAR RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT IN THE U.S.
World Stove is not alone in its development of biochar technology. There are numerous companies, organizations and individuals engaged in biochar projects, including the United States government.
Scientists with the federal Department of Agriculture are studying biochar with other researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Washington State University.
And according to the Associated Press:
“The USDA estimates biochar has the potential to replace about 25 percent of the annual oil consumption in this country. They say it especially seems promising as a soil amendment and to lock up greenhouse gases.”
LUCIA STOVE SEEMS A VIABLE SOLUTION
Biochar is not without its critics, though the main objection seems to be the growing and harvesting of trees specifically for biochar production, which would seem to defeat the purpose, of course. However, World Stoves is positioning its product as a means of utilizing biomass waste, not new wood grown specifically for that purpose.
At a time when the Women’s Refugee Commission is reporting that “Haitian women are resorting to burning trash, furniture or scraps of organic materials scrounged from the rubble—just to be able to cook for their families,” the Lucia stove certainly seems a viable solution.
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