Beaming with pride as she stirs a steaming pot of spinach and nuts, Maria Douca is one of the first in Mozambique’s capital to own an ethanol-fired stove, burning fuel made from locally grown cassava.
Betting that thousands of other city-dwellers will also switch from their charcoal stoves, a multi-national consortium plans to generate carbon credits to sell to greenhouse gas emitters on the other side of the planet.
Under the Cleanstar scheme led by Danish biotech giant Novozymes, Mozambican farmers sell surplus cassava that is converted to ethanol at a new facility near the central port city of Beira.
The fuel is then shipped to Maputo, where Cleanstar sells the stoves. They say they cannot keep up with demand. About 200 stoves were sold in the first month and another 3,000 are on order.
Douca has already bought two stoves despite the US$25 price tag — easily a week’s income for her family of eight.
Simple, clean and compact, the appliance designed by Swedish company Dometic looks rather like a camping stove, but does not produce smoke. For the first time in her life she can cook inside.
“I had problems with my eyes when I was cooking on the ground. My eyes ran, I had asthma problems,” she said.
About 85 percent of Mozambique’s energy comes from wood and charcoal. It is a leading cause of respiratory illness, and studies have shown that primitive cooking stoves kill more people per year — about 2 million — than malaria.
Cleanstar hopes to capture a sizable chunk of Maputo’s US$153 million a year charcoal business. Ethanol sells at roughly the same price as charcoal — which has doubled in the past three years.
Bank of America Merill Lynch has put US$4 million into the project, which will generate carbon credits, based on the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
The credits can be sold to polluters under trading schemes in places such as the EU or Australia.
“I have seen a dozen different cook stove projects that economically haven’t made sense. This is the first one I’ve seen that is completely integrated,” Bank of America Merill Lynch carbon markets portfolio director Abyd Karmali said. “From an environmental standpoint, it is delivering a very large greenhouse gas emission reduction.”
A move by the EU to accept new carbon credits only from the world’s poorest countries after this year has made countries like Mozambique more attractive to investors.
If successful, its investors believe the Cleanstar model could be replicated across the region.
“The reason this is interesting is the potential to replicate it not only once, but 10,000 times across Africa,” Novozymes president Steen Riisgaard said.
“Every single link in the value chain should make good money for themselves or the whole thing will fall apart. Also a little money for us selling enzymes,” he added.
The company’s enzymes help convert cassava chips into ethanol fuel at the Beira plant, the first of several planned facilities.
Initially hesitant to support the sale of cassava — a basic food for many — Mozambique’s government now embraces the project.
“There is no contradiction between producing for food and producing for agro-industry. Our country is vast,” Mozambique Agriculture Minister Jose Pacheco said.
Despite its fertile soils and favorable climate, Mozambique uses less than one-tenth of its arable land — the lowest land use in southern Africa.
Farming occupies 80 percent of the workforce, most cultivating just 1 hectare. Few farmers have access to seeds, fertilizers or modern equipment. Malnutrition is rife and the country is a net importer of staple foods.
On the face of it, everyone is a winner — the makers of the stoves and the ethanol, the family that uses the new gadget and the climate itself.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS