[OLPC India] OLPC - Cowdung/Biogas power - Kyoto Protocol logic

[Sameer Verma]

Sven AERTS wrote:
> Would it not be more feasible to use biogas for cooking and cooling,  
> and brewing some vodka - I mean - ethanol to power a little fuel cell  
> to run the OLPC ?
> Don't tell me there's no Vodka-equivalent over there... so the  
> farmers know how to brew ethanol ...
>
>   
The "ethanol" route can have societal misgivings :-)

Small biogas plants aren't that common (one per household) but can be 
found across many Indian villages. We (my family) have one in our 
backyard (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sverma/1705029738/). Runs off of 
cowdung (gobar), and pipes methane into the house for cooking and 
lighting. We've been thinking about running a power generator 
(gasoline/petrol or diesel, with minor mods).

The hard part about maintaining biogas plants on a per family basis is 
the maintenance of cows/buffaloes (just anecdotal...I speak from my own 
experience). If household consumption cannot justify the need, it 
becomes harder to keep them and feed them. We have a fairly good 
consumption of milk in the household and we also have farmland that can 
use the manure which is another byproduct of a biogas plant. The 
approach might scale better on a slightly larger scale though. We are 
also looking into running this thing off of decomposable garbage...

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/


> As a "Kyoto Protocol Consultant", I dare to say that prices of  
> PhotoVoltaics or Fuel Cells shouldn't be a problem since the OLPC- 
> organisation could claim the CO2-certificates for the whole project:
> 1. I think that opening up the olpc-project from a computer project  
> to an education to a CO2-reducing project would enable the OLPC- 
> education project to get access to the financial power behind the  
> "Kyoto Protocol".
> I've posted a presentation on the matter:
> http://www.slideshare.net/SvenAERTS/olp-csmall
>
> 2. The logic is; A normal PC consumes an average x kWh.  Electricity  
> is produced on the average in that country by emitting y tons of  
> Greenhouse gasses. So using an OLPC only uses x-something kWh x 1  
> million OLPC's in this country and the difference of the normal  
> computers - olpc computers in Greenhouse gasses NOT emitted can be  
> claimed as CO2 certificates and sold to CO2 emitting  
> countries'governments and companies in the West that HAVE to buy CO2- 
> certificates (price is now about 20€/CO2certificate.
>
> 3. I'd say: present OLPC as a technique where you go via the kids and  
> the schools to the parents and society as a whole to catalyze CO2- 
> reducing projects and the accompanying CO2-certificates: let the  
> ministiry of education make a list of all the Schools and public  
> buildings ... get an agreement to equip them with PV, Solar  
> collector, WindTurbine, relighting with low energy lamps ... get a  
> mandate to present that to the "Kyoto Protocol" financiers that need  
> CO2-certificates ... I am sure I can convince them to finance such a  
> project under these conditions.
>
> Sincerely,
> Skype: SvenAERTS
> Kyoto Protocol Consultant-Brussels
> Engineer, Car Mechanic, Post Graduated in international Relations/ 
> Finance and Peace Development
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