Although the clean development mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol makes some allowance for afforestation and reforestation, it has so far excluded “avoided deforestation”—for good rea- sons. However, the global climate change community increasingly recognizes that it must address the challenge of reduction of emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Besides the obvious magnitude of the potential for REDD to reduce climate change, the current situation is cre- ating perverse incentives and disincentives affecting other dimensions of climate change mitigation. The current Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) good prac- tice guidelines for national greenhouse gas (GHG) invento- ries provide a coherent framework for dealing with aboveground as well as belowground carbon effects of agri- culture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU).
Tag: fuels
Environmental sustainability of bioenergy strategies in western Kenya to address household air pollution
Over 640 million people in Africa are expected to rely on solid-fuels for cooking by 2040. In Western Kenya, cooking inefficiently persists as a major cause of burden of disease due to household air pollution. Efficient biomass cooking is a local-based renewable energy solution to address this issue. The Life-Cycle Assessment tool Simapro 8.5 is applied for analyzing the environmental impact of four biomass cooking strategies for the Kisumu County, with analysis based on a previous energy modelling study, and literature and background data from the Ecoinvent and Agrifootprint databases applied to the region. A Business-As-Usual scenario (BAU) considers the trends in energy use until 2035. Transition scenarios to Improved Cookstoves (ICS), Pellet-fired Gasifier Stoves (PGS) and Biogas Stoves (BGS) consider the transition to wood-logs, biomass pellets and biogas, respectively. An Integrated (INT) scenario evaluates a mix of the ICS, PGS and BGS. In the BGS, the available biomass waste is sufficient to be upcycled and fulfill cooking demands by 2035. This scenario has the lowest impact on all impact categories analyzed followed by the PGS and INT. Further work should address a detailed socio-economic analysis of the analyzed scenarios. © 2020 by the authors.