Carbon Manna Acknowledged in the WSJ

To refresh minds, Carbon Manna is a carbon micro credit scheme invented by my folk David Palella, a San Diego based entrepreneur with the cause of the poorest of world's rural populations in heart. 

The project aims at creating an incentive for rural people to offset their carbon footprint through the adoption and use of high-efficiency charcoal stoves, in lieu of burning the limited wooden resources. Carbon Manna system is based on existing infrastructure and uses simple mobile text message to transfer micro credits on recipients mobile devices. The good news is that mobile phone penetration amongst world's rural individuals has reached levels comparable to those in developing countries.

I came across this brilliant idea during MBA classes and fell in love with it, as I was fascinated by its simplicity and its exclusion of the middleman, hence zeroing any corruption risks and any form of admin costs. Another point fort which I immediately caught is its ability to stand firm against rampant inflation which is often a plague in poor spots.

Charcoal Stoves Distribution in Kenya (Carbon Manna Implementation)

Typically, the daily life of a poor family in rural Sub Saharan Africa is organized around a fuming roof basic house within which the fire corner continuously burns wooden pieces, harvested in the habitat with dire consequences for the environment. In some regions in Africa, this natural behavior has been fuelling the advancement of the Sahara desert . It is estimated that a poor rural family eventually produces up to 20 tons of carbon a year. Assuming a $15/ton of carbon, the inherent revenue per family is estimated at up to $300/year or more than 80% on a dollar/day of disposable income.

A full implementation of Carbon Manna will effectively include rural populations into the Kyoto Protocol and will enhance the potentials of global carbon emission reductions. It will work because these poor members will have a monetary incentive to adhere to this global struggle.

I subsequently decided to adopt it as a field project which I further developed with David's team help and adapted to become a sustainable business idea. The inherent project was selected for a presentation at the 2009 Future Energy Forum in Bilbao (Spain), adding credibility and confirming its viability. 

I am pleased to share that the Wall Street Journal has acknowledged the huge potential of this project, should it gain implementation and adoption on a global scale:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204346104576638553875004940.html

"On the face of it, the idea of Africa providing a model of sustainable energy development to the world seems an unlikely one. Eighty percent of the world's 1.5 billion people living without electricity live in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the African Development Bank. The continent's scarcity of grid links would seem to be an intractable obstacle to Africa's goals of improving development and alleviating poverty. Yet, Africa possesses significant solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower resources that have only barely been tapped, and which give the continent the potential to offer different models of sustainability". Power out of Africa by Andrea Chipman, WSJ, Dec 2011.

The article discusses about the untapped huge renewable energy opportunities that the African continent boasts, from solar to wind to water, to biomass when a large part of the population lacks access to basic electricity and most people in the continent suffer from regular electricity cuts. In short, the African continent is a "blank canvas for renewables" as WSJ's article puts it.

The article also looks at sustainable development via "a system that rewards changes of behavior on an individual level and at the same time allows families to raise themselves out of poverty": Carbon Manna's scheme.

Please feel free to send in your comments and thoughts.