Cooking and Heating with Biomass
by Lin Yang on January 5, 2009 in All Blogs, Inside the Belly of the Dragon
Ray Deng, Fulbright Fellow
We met today with Ray Deng, a Fulbright Fellow who’s currently based in Beijing and working with an organization called the Center for Entrepreneurship in International Health and Development (CEIHD). They’re doing something really interesting. CEIHD is currently experimenting with efficient, biomass stoves in rural Shanxi Province and Chongqing Municipality.
In the two experimentation areas, 3/5 of the cost of the stoves are subsidized by the Chinese government, while households pay the rest out of pocket. Biomass stoves run on a wide-array of fuel, from sticks to agricultural waste, corn husks, and wood pellets made of condensed waste wood pieces. These stoves are designed to channel and retain heat, and a lot of the efficiency technology lies in the wok that comes with the stove for cooking. Overall, these stoves can heat food and supply heat for the home much faster, and with less fuel, than conventional stoves.
CEIHD is hoping that these stoves can help rural communities improve the quality of air and reduce carbon emissions. For example, in Shanxi Province, households that primarily relied on coal for heating and cooking can prevent dirty coal emissions and reduce their carbon output by switching to these biomass stoves. In addition, households no longer have to rely on purchasing coal, whose prices can fluctuate based on national energy demand and international energy markets. Even in areas such as Chongqing that primarily rely on biomass fuel already, these stoves require less biomass, thereby further reducing each home’s carbon footprint. In addition, using less fuel also reduces the opportunity cost of spending time to find biomass to burn.
Finally, Ray and company are hoping to measure the carbon offsets produced by these biomass stoves, and sell them on the carbon sequestration credit market. The proceeds would then be used to replicate their program and subsidize the distribution of more biomass stoves. We’ve been struggling over the past couple of days to define what exactly is social entrepreneurship, but this sounds like a sustainable model for creating social good.
By the way, Ray is also an amazing photographer. You can find his work at: www.dengray.blogspot.com.
Written by Lin Yang · Filed Under All Blogs, Inside the Belly of the Dragon
Lin Yang is currently a second year MPP candidate at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Prior to Harvard, he spent six months at Tsinghua University in Beijing, conducting research on China's shortage of water resources. He also taught high school mathematics for two years in the Mississippi Delta as part of Teach for America.
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