Warm Heart at Work

I recently looked at the blog published by Paul Kuehn at Global PACT. I really liked the fact that it combines posts about real people doing real things to solve real problems. It’s not just about how the dot.com billionaires have decided to find a cure for AIDS. It’s about how groups of college students have solved some small but significant problem in their university’s neighborhood using the knowledge they learned in class. I love to have evidence to point to when people say - as so many do - “but what can I do?”

The other thing I like about the Global PACT blog - http://blog.globalpact.org - is that it’s got lots of information about how to make change. After all, wanting to do something is seldom enough, knowing how to do it makes you a whole lot more likely to succeed!

Reading the Global PACT blog also made me think that it would be useful for us to offer links to other blogs that deal with our areas of interest: community development and activism, kids, sustainable development, microenterprise, microfinance, alternative energy and the environment, women and development, public health.

Do you have any favorites to suggest? Please let me know in a comment.

Having bid a sad farewell to Andrea Castillo last week, the team has translated the results of our recent market survey and brought them to Bangkok for further meetings with Dr. Michael Shafer and a consulting engineer. After another round of evaluations, the team has a roadmap for the additional work and research that must be completed. For the next few weeks, the team will be concentrating on performing more fieldwork around Phrao. Last week’s market survey will be considerably broadened as more data is collected on how the agricultural material flows in northern Thailand.

Updates to follow!

Colin Ashe is the newest member of the Carbon Credits and Renewable Energy team. Colin recently graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in Biology. He will be taking over all projects at the end of this week when Andrea Castillo finishes her summer internship with Warm Heart and heads back to San Diego.

This week, most of Warm Heart’s Thai staff is conducting informal interviews with biomass farmers and biomass businesses all over Phrao in order to more accurately assess the availability of agricultural residue in the district. According to the data gathered, there is enough biomass within a 50km radius of Phrao to establish at least a 4 mega watt biomass powered generator. This is a major turning point in the project, as the availability of biomass will ultimately define the future boundaries of this project.

With the research phase of the biomass project nearly finished, Andrea Castillo of UCSD took a trip to Bangkok to meet with a consultant engineer. This American engineer has been working in Thailand since 1982 and has extensive experience in the energy sector. He has also worked on several renewable energy projects, five of which include Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) approved biomass powered generator projects.

Andrea and the engineer went over the data that has been gathered over the course of the summer and the numbers looked promising. The team will still need to gather more data on the estimated surplus biomass in order to figure out the actual tonnage that will, in fact, be available. Andrea had also prepared several technical questions to ask the engineer. He was able to provide some great resources and will follow up on the more information that is still missing.

Overall, the meeting went very well. It looks like the team will move onto implementation feasibility research, the next phase of the project. This process will involve several informal and formal meetings with local stakeholders and the creation of the Project Design Document (PDD). The engineer will be heavily involved in this task as it involves a great deal of technical expertise.

For now, the team is focused on looking for a location for the power generator. Ideally, it will be a small piece of land that is close to a main road for transportation and electricity access, and to a water source for cooling water.

The team will also go around and collect samples of the biomass around Phrao such as corn cobs, rice husks, longan tree branches, rice straw, etc., and send them to a university for a chemical profile. This will help to assess the heat generating ability of each type of biomass and give a more clear picture of how much electricity can generated with the biomass powered generator operations.

The team is very excited about moving forth with this project.

Last week, the Carbon Credits team focused on data collection and analysis. Through extensive field research, including interviews with rice, corn, and longan farmers, the team discovered that many sources of fuel for the biomass generator, such as straw stalks, leaves, and branches are currently being thrown away, burned, or left on the fields to decompose. As a result, in addition to using corncobs and rice husks, the biomass generator will also use longan, mango, and lychee tree branches, as well as rice straw, corn stalk, and leaves. The team is also researching the possibility of using bagasse and soybean residue.

Next week, the team will meet with an engineer in Bangkok to discuss the feasibility of the biomass powered generator project.

In the meantime, the team will now focus on researching the best location for the generator.

The Renewable Energy team an exciting week planned ahead! To kick off the week, the Renewable Energy team will meet with local government officials on Tuesday to present the biomass (rice husk and corn cob) power generator. Their presentation will cover how the project will be undertaken, how it will be financed, as well as the direct and indirect benefits that the project brings to the community. The meeting will also serve as a time to answer any questions and address any concerns the officials might have. For the remainder of this week, the team will work on the results and/or any developments from this important meeting.

In addition, research on the landfill methane project is scheduled to start. As of now there are no established landfills in the district and it seems that the most common waste management in the community is to simply burn garbage. As a result, the research will focus on landfill design to optimize methane capturing methods and will also focus on efficient waste management.

The idea to establish renewable energy projects started about a month ago. The overall goal for these projects would be to reduce Phrao’s (and Thailand’s overall) dependency on fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum and at the same time, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, these projects would create local employment and generate revenue to increase local wages and help Warm Heart become a self-sustaining organization. The first project would involve a small-scale rice husk and corn cob powered generator. Warm Heart would purchase the surplus biomass residue created here in Phrao and also purchase biomass residue in some of the surrounding districts such as Chiang Dao and Mae Taeng. The second project would involve a biogas generator powered by methane gas we would collect from a landfill in Phrao.

Finally, Warm Heart wanted to work on a reforestation project with some of the ethnic minorities who live on the eastern hills of Phrao. These parts of Phrao have been heavily deforested, so this would be a great opportunity to improve the environment and generate employment for the local ethnic minorities. All of the above-mentioned projects would bring in key revenues from carbon credits – a key aspect that will help us achieve energy and financial security for both the local community and Warm Heart. The Carbon Credits and Renewable Energy team consists Trireuhat “P’ John” Wongsatan, a Thai staff member with an extensive background in Industrial Education and Andrea Castillo, a second year graduate student at UCSD.

The is currently engaged in research and data collection to assess the feasibility of these projects.