Household Energy Emissions and Climate Change

LPG Tanks Photo Bharat Tanks

Not being a climate change specialist myself, I have been wondering why biomass energy burned as fuel in households generally does not show up in the climate change calculations. For instance typical families burning 0.18 tons LPG for cooking per year actually gets included in the estimates of greenhouse gas emissions and yet a similar family burning close to 2 tons of fuelwood per year is not considered as producing any greenhouse gas emissions.

According to my back of the envelope calculations people mostly in developing counties burn about 730 million tons of biomass per year for cooking and this amounts to about 1 billion tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. This burning emits about 3%-4% of the world’s total CO2 emissions which according to some estimates is about 28 billion tons per year coming mostly from developed countries. World experts generally do not include the emissions from burning fuelwood, straw or dung because they are renewable. Thus, putting black carbon, health and other benefits aside, from a climate perspective the emissions from burning biomass are generally are considered to be climate neutral.


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Cooking Emissions India: Photo Barnes

Perhaps oversimplifying there seems to be three perspectives on the recognition of emissions from biomass household fuels as a factor in climate change. The first scenario recognizes all emissions from cooking with biomass energy as greenhouse gases. Does it really matter whether CO2 comes from a coal plant or from fuelwood or straw burning? There are very few programs in the world that grow wood, straw or dung specifically for burning as a household fuel. It mostly comes from local commons, farm fields or in the case of dung from farm animals. Thus, the CO2 absorbed by local woodlands and farms is not directly related to fuel production as is the case for biofuels such as alcohol fuels, fuel from oil seed production and others. There is a tremendous amount of biomass growth naturally in the world including areas remote from populations. But that biomass growth absorbs CO2 from any source that produces it.

The second option that is commonly accepted by climate specialists is that burning biomass from resources that are renewed every year involves a balanced cycle. For example, as indicated previously ethanol comes from various biomass sources that are regrown every year and the greenhouse gases produced by burning it are in balance because presumably they are absorbed by the next years growth. Similarly CO2 from fuelwood burned from sustainable forests is not counted as a climate threat because of the balanced cycle of CO2 production and absorption. Thus, only fuelwood from non-sustainable production—which of course is very difficult to measure or document—should be considered as increasing greenhouse gases. This position links the burning of the fuel with the source of the fuel production.

The third possibility is that all biomass is potentially renewable and therefore should not count in the climate change debate. A cow eats biomass and produces dung and this dung falls to the ground and facilitates further biomass production. But what if this dung is burned in an inefficient a stove for cooking? I know this also is complicated by the fact that gases are emitted even when the dung sits in the field and it might be better to burn it in a digester. However, the general principle is that wood, dung and straw are all renewable energy and should not be counted as producing adverse climate emissions.

Anyway I really just want to find out what people think about how burning biomass energy as a household fuel fits into the climate change discussions. This is an important issue because it impacts the way carbon emissions are viewed for mitigating climate change. Please give comments or at least answer the attached poll on household energy and greenhouse gas emissions.

poll by twiigs.com