Advanced BioFuels USA

Reason for concern: 3.8 billion people (49% of the global population) still rely on traditional energy sources to support household needs such as cooking, heating, and lighting. Due to this, household air pollution is a top-ten risk factor for global morbidity and mortality.

This webinar will provide a summary of research findings from STAR Grant R835421 “Experimental Interventions to Facilitate Clean Cookstove Adoption, Promote Clean Indoor Air, and Mitigate Climate Change” and related ongoing work at Stockholm Environmental Institute and North Carolina State University.

Study objectives were linked to feasibility improvements in clean stove design and dissemination and their impacts on health and climate. They include: 1) assess the acceptability and availability of different stove technologies and fuels, 2) experiment by varying stove price and social interactions among users to determine the impact of these variables on stove adoption rates, 3) measure in situ the impacts of stove adoption on indoor and outdoor air pollution, and climate-forcing, and 4) model the impacts of widespread stove adoption on regional and global climate through a range of scenarios directly informed by data from the field.

Webinar participation is free. For the webinar, a high-speed internet connection is required. Please note that the webinar technology allows attendees to listen to audio through their computer or by phone. Additional log-in information will be provided upon registration.

Register today for the February 24th webinar

Date and Time: February 24, 2021 – 3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)/Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which is 8:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Mountain Standard Time (MST)

For more information on this webinar, please contact: ashes-csu@colostate.edu
Meet our presenters:

Dr. Rob Bailis is a senior scientist at the Stockholm Environmental Institute’s US Center. His research focuses on the relationships between energy, social welfare, and environmental change in developing countries. Rob first became interested in these themes while teaching math and physics in northwestern Kenya for the US Peace Corps. He joined SEI after a decade as an academic researcher and university instructor. Most of Rob’s current projects are field studies of traditional biomass and transitions to clean cooking in Eastern and Southern Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean. Rob also collaborates on efforts to map and model wood fuel sustainability throughout the global south. He has a PhD in Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley and an MS and BS in Physics from Northwestern and Penn State respectively.

Dr. Andy Grieshop is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU), which he joined in 2012. Dr. Grieshop’s research focuses on interactions between energy use and the environment, and more specifically on improving our technical understanding of the emission and atmospheric transformations of air pollutants. This work aims to inform effective policies to improve air quality and mitigate climate impacts in both developed and developing countries. His research integrates laboratory and field based experimentation with modeling and policy analysis efforts and has been funded by the NSF, US EPA, the Health Effects Institute and the UN Foundation. Dr. Grieshop received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley and his MS in Mechanical Engineering and PhD in Mechanical Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Abhishek Kar is a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University. Abhishek has conducted multi-disciplinary research and managed field interventions related to household air pollution for the last thirteen years. His research interests span pollution (emission and impacts), policy (subsidies and regulation), and people (behavior change). His work has been published in Nature Energy (featured on the cover of the September 2019 issue), Environmental Science and Technology, and Nature Human Behaviour. His research findings have been shared widely on social media, including by the Prime Minister of India, and prominently covered by mainstream media.  READ MORE