Global carbon markets overcredit cookstove greenhouse gas reductions by 10
phys.org
phys.org
Sometimes I think we should have only an LVT and a carbon tax. Every year the government would tally up how much it spent and send out bills for land ownership and carbon emissions. There would be no deficits, the goverment would necessarilly collect as much as it spent (with the exception of non payment), and it would eliminate all need for any tax beurocracy and record keeping.
That's a huge unsolved issue with the Carbon Tax AND Carbon Credits solutions. Your idea doesn't solve it.
Should an American putting fuel into their hummer pay the same level of duties on a litre of diesel as someone putting fuel in their tractor in Uganda, and how do we get all the countries to agree what the acceptable rate is?
There are nasty side effects to that though, the first one being that these subsidies usually are based directly or indirectly on the land size which made less efficient food products like meat much more subsidized than anything else.
We'll have to bring some more rational approach there if we want to improve the land use for climate change.
And then there's also the utility of the fuel used as you mentioned, there should be a difference of treatment between tractors and private jets indeed. But I don't think it needs to be too precise, cutting the worst offenders and taxing otherwise should be good enough.
The same tax applied globally will have very different effects in a third world country to a first world country. Farmers in the USA will react very differently to a 5p per litre tax to farmers in Burundi.
Usually developed countries are emitting less, the cause of that abnormally bad result is the high number of coal plants in China.
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/05/19/blog-why-co....
However you mentioned America and Uganda. They would have different tax rates based on agreements between countries. The fact that the US is the largest historical emitter and poorer countries need more flexibility to emit carbon in order to grow is already well established in country to country discussions on this subject. Often the suggestion is that carbon tax funds from historical emitters would partially go to paying poor countries to upgrade to green infrastructure.
For example see this 2022 article from the IMF: https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/05/19/blog-why-co....
Yes - but the issue is how to get global agreement between all countries.
i.e. Will the USA agree to be taxed substantially more per unit than China and Russia?
In NZ we also have an effective system for recognising and incentivising certain classes of forest carbon removals (which I think are a legitimate and important class of credits - unlike avoided emission credits which I agree are junk).
for anything fuel-based (both fossil and "renewable" such as wood pellets and biogas), we know how much CO2 a given quantity of fuel emits. Place a tax on the importers and producers of the raw material, that's it.
Other processes that emit greenhouse gases - especially construction and agriculture such as cow farms - are a bit more difficult to calculate, but there's enough data available to make reasonable averages.
Sounds simple. How would you limit how much government plans to spend? Like, "oh yeah, we can now do everything we want, because we don't have any ceiling, we just offload it on land owners". There would still need to be some kind of budget.
Carbon taxes seem a lot more controversial (especially among anti-tax populists) than incentives are because "borrowing" (aka printing money) is a nice loophole where you can have lots of incentives without taxing people for it.
Incentives are less controversial and a lot easier to implement. Everybody likes benefitting from incentives. And they work. Republicans hate increasing taxes but they love printing money as much as the Democrats do. They only are in favor of reducing the deficit when they are not in power. When they are, the deficit goes up. That was true under Trump, both Bush presidencies. And even Reagan spent more than he cut and increased the deficit. Spending is just easier than cutting. Economies are not circular. You don't have to raise every penny you spend via taxes.
That's also how the inflation reduction act works. Which is an ironic name because printing an extra trillion or so dollars is going to have some inflationary effects. But it undeniably has a great stimulating impact as well as there now is a lot of economic activity around renewable energy that is creating a lot of growth, jobs, etc. A trillion $ in new taxes would have most of the US population picking up pitchforks and heading out to lynch politicians. Sadly, some of that goes straight to the oil and gas industry though. But at least they now pretend a bit harder that they don't want to continue to rake in billions by getting us to buy oil and gas for as long as they can get away with that.
So, a huge project is set up to change the lifestyle (food preparation) of almost a third of the world population. To remove at most 2% of greenhouse gas emissions?
Is there really no lower hanging fruit? (Or is that low hanging fruit, a cynical me guesses, requiring change to the lifestyles of rich western people?)
Likely this, plus the fossil fuel lobby (many of whom are not "western" but are very very rich), plus the leadership in several "developing" countries such as Russia, China and India hedging their energy bets.
I would be interested in lower handing fruits that does not for 1/4 of the population to change. If we change consumption / spending habits that will also propagate.
Personally, I think politicians are doing a really good job in trying to balance things.
Eg. It should be super easy to increase taxes on one-family detached houses and cars. This would almost immediately lead to reduced emissions – so this fruit is almost on the ground.
However, the truth is that people don't want to live in apartments and take public transport.
But as Tony Blair's aide explained so clearly, politicians have nothing to gain in trying to prevent these issues, and everything to lose, because the average voter doesn't give a shit about even the near future.
High taxes on fossil fuels would make not profitable to extract in complex ways.
They are also less effective than the (foreign) alternatives, and it becomes impractical to differentiate at the very end of the chain, when it all been blended together and processed... This in theory should be handled by market forces, but in practice it doesn't seem to work : the US tight oil industry has been losing money almost every year since its restart in the oughties, yet somehow keeps getting funded : is this the next big Wall Street scam after subprime mortgages, funded with bank bailout money ??
I mean, you talk like this is the only project of this sort. There's _lots_ of lower hanging fruit, but it is being picked. See electric cars, forestry, biodiesel and a million other things.
Even without any carbon reduction, this would be worth doing, though, and there were charities who worked in this even before carbon credits were a thing. Household air pollution kills 3.8 million people a year (over half of the deaths from _all_ air pollution!), and it's mostly associated with cookstoves.
> The fastest growing type of offset on the global carbon market subsidizes the distribution of efficient cookstoves in developing countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
'fastest growing' can be quite deceptive, if the fast-growing thing is relatively small.
Matt Levine's newsletter occasionally covers the carbon credits market; it gets _weird_.
And improve health outcomes, these things are bad for people breathing nearby - especially when used in small areas.
You have actually cut out
> contributing to 2 to 3 million premature deaths annually
from the sentence!
And shift the health and environmental issues to other places?
Which is neglegible. I think the part that improves health and reduces death, is extremely valuable. But important like vaccinations, sewers and food programs are important.
2% is not negligible at all. Only 5 countries emit more than 2% of the total, for the rest are all of their emissions negligible?
2% is double the impact of making all international flights carbon zero. It's like making all international shipping carbon neutral.
So it's honestly a large result, but not only that it also saves huge numbers of lives, and improves the health of many more. If you want to argue it's a bad thing to do or focus on, you cannot simply ignore "also it saves millions of lives a year".
2 to 3 million less carbon emitters annually /s.
Now other emissions such as particulate could be helpful for their well being. Which is also reasonable goal...
Now involving carbon markets for reducing these emissions, that is just green washing and should not happen.
Exactly my point. And while it may be good to strive to even reduce that, currently there are far lower-hanging-fruit that give a much larger win for far less investment. That is, if this -at most- 2% reduction comes for "free" because changing is something we need to do for other reasons (health, budget, etc) then fine, any win is a win. But from the article I get that a rather large system is set up to measure, offset and calculate the greenhouse emission of this -IMO- negligible contribution. It begs the question "why is air travel largely excempted from the same system of certification"? Or "why is meat and farming in general not put under the same scrutiny"?
On the measurable, the fact that some has found that the measures were wrong is encouraging. It can be monitored. When will we find out if tree planting offsets do not happen? Years or decades down the line. In this case I think it is probably fixable - obviously the new stoves are not as good from the users point of view. I suspect outside experts designing things without user input - they should be treated as customers and their feedback incorporated early.
I think you are entirely right about reluctance to change some people's lifestyles, but is not as simple as "rich western" vs "poor non-western". For one thing, the world is not longer that simple - there are plenty of rich non-western countries. Even economies that are not as rich per capita as a whole, have both substantial rich groups and regions within them and they have large economies (and CO2 eomissions) in total.
Also, it is western countries that have reduced their emissions the most. I linked to a blog post of mine with a graph before: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/03/co2-emissions-will-keep-risin... on HN.
The problem you mention happens a lot within countries. It looks to me as though, for example, net zero policies in the UK will affect the lifestyle of the rich far less than that of the hoi polloi.
If anything this just shows that even though problems are revealed, they keep happening, and companies keep getting away with their greenwashing claims. That is the exact opposite of encouraging.
Agree completely about offsets being used for green washing. There is a large element of Goodhart's law here. Policy is driven by meeting metrics.
https://www.france.tv/france-2/cash-investigation/saison-4/1...
More than a couple of years though (2016).
And the fact that this article mentions Gold Standard as being much better with the cookstoves and it avoiding some of that forest credits makes me think it's the good carbon credit issuer. Anyone with access to the scientific article proper can tell who issued the carbon credits for cookstoves?
edit: I also forgot where I read this but IIRC Verra has more corporate origins while Gold Standard comes from the NGO world may also be relevant.
The last two parts have nothing to do with greenhouse emission reduction. They are important, don't get me wrong. And valuable.
But if the only reason to start reducing greenhouse emissions in a sector is "it is measurable", we are doing a poor job. Because I am certain there's far lower-hanging-fruit, that is also measurable, but simply not as popular as "these other people have to change their lifestyle" and therefore omitted. Edit: I am specifically thinking about severely reducing meat from our diets (i.e. go partially, or entirely vegetarian), or about not flying to Bali for a 2 week holiday. Because those are far bigger than 2% globally. Estimates go to resp. 30% and 15%. Reduce half of all of them, and the "cooking on wood" might reduce 1% (which acc. to the article actually is merely 0.1%) and 15% or 7.5% resp. It is blindingly obvious what has the biggest impact on greenhouse gas emission reduction.
So it is not that suprising that there so much resistance, because it really is just another way for the rich and powerful to keep poor people in their places.
> these other people have to change their lifestyle
In this case, the lifestyle change is "not dying of poor indoor air quality", so I think people will generally be fine with that. You're generally looking here at some combo of replacing open fires with stoves, replacing inefficient solid fuel stoves with more efficient solid fuel stoves, or replacing solid fuel stoves with LPG stoves (plus venting improvements etc).
Also simply with the world population increasing if everyone would switch to vegan diet we'd still reach these emission numbers just a little bit later.
I wonder if methane/carbon capture projects will eventually "monkeypatch" this issue or not.
The problem with this argument is that everything is a small percentage contribution if you break it down enough.
At the moment some UK politicians are saying the UK shouldn't be concerned about reducing emissions because the UK only contributes about 1% to global emissions (we also have ~1% of the world's population which I think rather negates this argument).
2% is a lot. If we want to tackle this problem in a reasonable timescale we need to go for the low hanging fruit, the high hanging fruit, and all the fruit in between.
I'm quite certain that efforts such as "taxing kerosine on international flights", "charge VAT for flights", or even "removing all subsidies for beef and pork production in the EU" have a much larger effect. So if we can spare our effort or funds only once, those would be much more obvious places to start.
As I said elsewhere: if CO2 emission reduction comes for free with a project that tries to fix health issues with cooking, then fine. But let's not pretend we are doing anything to save our (ability to live on) the planet here.
Completely eliminating global air travel would also be about 2% of CO2.
I would not be surprised if low CO2 cooking was vastly more cost efficient in terms of $/GHG than what you would get from a similar spend elsewhere.
But, indeed, 2% is more than many country contribute¹. Still far less than e.g. driving around in Pickup-trucks. Or, most obvious: burning coal for electricity³.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_locations_and_entities... ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_locations_and_entities... ³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_locations_and_entities...
This is problematic. The more you tax flying, the more you make it only a rich person's activity.
Why only international flights? Domestic flights produce about the same amount of emissions, and are easier to substitute with something else, e.g. train journeys.
The other problem with aviation is that we don't have any tech that can really replace it, whereas we have the tech now to replace most other sources of emissions. My view is that if we can get all the sources of emissions down, then we can probably live with the 2% or so of emissions from aviation until we have the tech to replace it.
> or even "removing all subsidies for beef and pork production in the EU"
This is something I'd support. Reducing red meat consumption would likely improve health, the environment, animal welfare, and other things as well as reducing emissions. However, very difficult to achieve politically.
> But let's not pretend we are doing anything to save our (ability to live on) the planet here.
We need a multi-pronged approach to simultaneously reduce emissions on all fronts. We can't just ignore 2% of global emissions if we're serious about tackling the problem.
Why is that a problem? Climbing the Mount Everest, Joining a Country Club, or flying into space is also a rich person's activity - is that a problem too?
> Why only international flights
AFAIK some countries already tax domestic flights. And if they don't, that's easy to achieve. Taxing international flights is harder, because there'll always be a few countries that won't agree.
> However, very difficult to achieve politically.
Yes. But "difficult to achieve politically" is strange: because the only hurdle to take is not a 'real' hurdle. Not 'real' as most engineering, or economic hurdles are. It's not a matter of money, funds, scientific breakthroughs or such, it's mere a matter of willingness to change. Which, it appears, is one of the hardest hurdles to take.
And yes: I agree we should not leave any percent improvement on the table. But I remain with my point that money and effort that we can spend only once, should not go to changing the habits, cultutre and lifestyle of 1/4th of the worlds' population for a meagre 2% win, but to changing the habits, culture and lifestyle of another part of the population can get us a 15% win. Ideally we'd be able to spend that effort and money twice. For a total 17% win. But as long as we cannot do that, let's spend it on where it gets the biggest results.
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-world-s-top-1-of-emitte...
There’s certainly low-hanging fruit. If the top 10% of emitters reduced their emissions to that of the average European person, global emissions would fall by 30%.
These projects may reduce emissions, and they may improve health outcomes, but they also keep the poor subjugated by the global industrial system. That must be a factor in the programs’ popularity — it’s another way to extract wealth from the poor.
Gold Standard methodologies are more thorough, with the greatest credibility in a metered approach.
Only advanced ICS and fuel switch technologies have material health benefits, although regional and cultural suitability is key (electric cookers don’t make sense in remote regions where energy infrastructure is usually limited).
fNRB is frequently over-estimated, but the latest MoFuSS model values are set at the national level, and correcting the data inputs to be locally specific may improve the accuracy of the results.
(I discuss these topics in depth in an article posted by Abatable last November: https://www.abatable.com/blog/which-methodologies-will-help-...)
Nevertheless, the stark reality remains: four million people die every year from illnesses associated with smoke from cooking. The need to transition towards better living conditions cannot be ignored, nor can the impact of carbon finance today, which has already driven millions of households toward cleaner practices.
I hope this study represents a turning point for the cookstove sector, helping to sift out the biased methodologies and over-crediting techniques which have brought its reputation into dispute. I have confidence that the development of more robust methodologies (including the works of 4C led by the Clean Cooking Alliance) and quality indicators such as the CCPs, will ensure the longevity of these projects.
It is clearly possible to do from a physics standpoint - but the trick is how to do it in a robust, easy to use, and low particulate emissions way.
High efficiency stoves also tend to be very hard to get lit - since they only really function when everything is at operating temperature. That problem needs to be solved - perhaps for example by storing gasified fuel from the previous use to start it next time.
Instead, they collect wood 1 month before they use it (saving that 'interest'), and live with the fact their stove is a bit smokey.
But they are unaware that their smokey stove is giving them lung cancer and making their family sick too.
A stove design that could handle wet wood efficiently and without giving out deadly smoke would save a lot of lives and help the environment.
Firewood. Charcoal. Ethanol. LPG. Pellets.
In countries:
Bangladesh. Mexico. Ghana. Nigeria. Kenya.
Average home size:
4.2 people.
Condensing boilers are commonly used for burning natural gas and petroleum fuels already. They just have a pipe out the side that dribbles condensate water.
The problem with recondensing smoke from a wood fire is you tend to end up with lots of tar and end up with a sticky mess. However, if your burn hot enough with good mixing and the right air fuel mixture, that won't happen.
Unfortunately that's hard to achieve without a computer monitoring temperatures and oxygen levels and adjusting fans etc. Which obviously makes your device much more complex, less repairable, and expensive.
Why, though? Solar panels are becoming very cheap and induction stoves aren't necessarily high tech. Ikea makes this:
https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/tillreda-portable-induction-coo...
Surely a cheap knock off could be made for $10-15 or something.
Hence the comment about the majority of the underdeveloped world and the near term.
( A key feature of much of the underdeveloped world is a general lack of IKEA kitchens with handy wall plugs and 24/7 high wattage grids )
Product details -> Good to know -> Connection rating: 1800W. That's max power, I imagine they could run it at 900W, which, from what I see, would be 2-3 panels.
Also, I don't think it's the "majority of the underdeveloped world".
Based on this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/521212/number-of-off-gri..., to me those numbers look something like 20-30-40% of the population in these underdeveloped countries.
Anyway, it's kind of a moot point, this will probably happen on its own over time, where it makes sense.
> ( A key feature of much of the underdeveloped world is a general lack of IKEA kitchens with handy wall plugs and 24/7 high wattage grids )
This snark is irrelevant. I didn't say they should buy it from Ikea, ergo my comment about the $10-15 copycat (probably from Aliexpress). Nor did I say they should buy an Ikea <<kitchen>>. You can plug that thing on top of a $2 table to a regular wall plug or even an extension cord.
Because its not reliable. Fuel stoves are extremely reliable, you just need access to the fuel and most of the time there is a level of interchangability on types of fuels. Electronics fail. Fuel stoves generally do not or if they do, repairable.
The sun is not always shining. What do you do, not cook? Yes, you can add batteries, thats increased costs and more failures. Or do you add massive solar arrays for each home? 900watts is not a trivial amount for someone living in a rural country side.
But they are also still used in big cities and other places where essentially trying to improve their efficiency is papering over the failure to build and maintain working infrastructure (mostly electricity, but also gas pipes etc.). And it won't work.
That's just a list of the worlds biggest countries. https://xkcd.com/1138/
So no, nothing is even close to be linear here and pretending that it is is nonsense.
No, buying cooking stove to Ugandan families won't solve climate change, they aren't part of the problem. Reducing fossil fuel use in the developed world and a few other big polluters will.