Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Sun24's initiative combines tongs and rock beds to enable cooks who use open fire cookstoves (eg, three stone cookstoves) to
1. Make and sell tong charcoal, AND
2. Reduce their firewood usage by a third and emissions by half.

We have been training cooks to use rock beds for several years.  Free rocks placed on the ground elevate firewood and allow air to circulate under the fire.  This improves efficiency, cutting firewood usage by a third and emissions in half.  Each rock bed mitigates about 0.5 tonnes of CO2e per year.

In 2024, we developed a method of removing embers from wood cookstoves with simple tongs and quenching the embers to make quality charcoal.  Families make about 1 kg of tong charcoal per day.  Tong charcoal can be sold in markets and replace traditional wood charcoal.  Each tonne of tong charcoal replaces a tonne of traditional wood charcoal, mitigating 10 tonnes of CO2e.

A training video that demonstrates tongs and rock beds is linked.

How Project Affects Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions:

['Replaces/avoids GHGs (e.g., projects that replace sources of GHGs, such as the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat, transport, or other energy uses)', 'Reduces GHGs (e.g., projects that reduce sources of GHGs, such as through efficiency or other changes in consumption)']

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

Women and girls do most of the cooking and wood collection in developing countries.  The World Bank estimated that women and girls in Sub-Saharan Africa spend an average of 2.1 hours per week collecting firewood, exposing them to animal attacks and sexual attacks.  This has certainly increased since the WB report was published 10 years ago. Rock beds will save them 0.7 hours per week.  http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/164241468178757464/pdf/98664-REVISED-WP-P146621-PUBLIC-Box393185B.pdf

We estimate that an average family can make about USD 150 per year making tong charcoal.  This will be very welcome by these extremely poor families.