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from unclean air hovering over cities to unhealthy smoke in homes, air pollution continues to put human health and climate on the line. cameroon, popularly referred to as africa in miniature, is reputed for its geographical and cultural diversity, especially when it comes to traditional meals. for most cameroonians, the three stone fireside method of cooking transcends just making food. it speaks to generational cultures and bonds built over moonlight folklore and folktales of their shared history.

but, for the longest time, the process of preparing these meals has been largely powered by biomass fuels, made possible by the cutting down of trees. the health challenges associated with exposure to these cooking methods cannot be undermined as about 3.2 million worldwide deaths in 2020 were attributed to household air pollution, according to the world health organization. despite these health consequences, most people across sub-saharan africa still cannot afford clean cooking technologies.

aisata ibamie is a young renewable energy engineer, innovative clean energy activist, and a mandela washington fellow (mwf) from logone, a charey village in the far north region of cameroon, and she has had first-hand experience with the challenges of cooking in the country. (in full disclosure, mwf is where this author first met ibamie.) growing up in a rural community, fetching firewood for cooking was one of her least favorite chores –– a routine she shares with more than 70% of cameroonians who still do not have access to clean cooking technologies, as revealed by the world bank. 

driven by curiosity, ibamie’s rare passion and determination to change this narrative for cameroonians led to her creation of an energy efficient and affordable cooker: a cordless, portable, and non-electric bag made from cotton. ibamie hopes the asaab thermal cooker will go a long way to reduce deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions.

“if i want to cook red beans for example, it often takes us two to three hours with firewood or gas. with the thermal cooker, you need just 15 minutes of gas or firewood to boil it, take it off and place in the asaab thermal cooker and close. after 3 hours, it is ready. rice is just 25 minutes on the cooker after heating on any classical fire for 3 minutes. you can leave the food in the cooker for up to 10 hours and it will still be hot when you get back. our customers testify that they are preparing red beans, meat, and others. this is a way for the woman to be free. we have natural and artificial carbon footprints. using the asaab thermal cooker reduces co2.”

the tragic and avoidable chronic illnesses from unhealthy cookstoves continue to put women and girls at the most vulnerable positions as they often stand at the frontline of gathering fuels and preparing meals. to ibamie, providing the thermal cooker solution will not only save lives and the climate, but go a long way to address gender inequalities and promote girl child education in cameroon. 

“one of the motivations for the asaab thermal cooker is that i come from the far north region of cameroon, where women are often marginalized. so they don’t really go to school as they are are expected to take care of the family and not supposed to be educated in school. every time they are cooking — for up to three times per day. always cooking, so they don’t have to go anywhere because they are controlling food. for me, it was a way to give them a chance to take care of the family and also go to school, do business, or go on vacation if they want to. in fact, to be free of always going to the kitchen every time.”

a recent research publication in the pan african medical journal found that indoor pollution already kills about 7,000 people in cameroon annually. considering the numerous kitchen accidents recorded from cooking appliances, ibamie designed the asaab thermal cooker with user-safety in mind.

“i was thinking about safety. i wanted something light that customers would not need too much (experience) to use. the asaab thermal cooker is very safe to use as you don’t have to plug into current or put in the sun before using. it is very simple to use. even your children can come back from school, open it, and serve themselves easily — unlike gas, where you maybe worried that they are exposed to fire, which is very dangerous for the household.”

as the number of internally displaced women and girls continue to rise in cameroon due to security concerns such as the ongoing anglophone crisis in the northwest and southwest regions, and the boko haram insurgency in the northern regions of the country, ibamie believes the thermal cooker could not be more timely.

“the cooker is a blessing for displaced women because they are never stable. they are always moving from one place to another, so it is easy to handle. it is very light. it is less than three kilograms (approximately 6.5 pounds) and you can pack it in a handbag and you go anywhere you want to go with. i can say it is very practical.”

as an emerging young african leader, participating in the 2022 mandela washington fellowship at the university of reno, nevada, served as an opportunity to scale her business by expanding to new markets.

“i met fellows that i can work together with, in the same areas like cooking and climate change and thermal energy efficiency. so yes, i really met people and made customers who brought me other customers, so i have to ship asaab thermal cookers to the u.s.”

by helping to reduce the cutting of trees, ibamie is contributing to one of the focal points of the united nations environmental program (unep), which is to achieve a significant reduction in deforestation while boosting agricultural productivity. it also aligns nicely with one of the resolutions of the climate pact during the 26th edition of the united nations conference of parties in glasgow (cop26 glasgow climate pact), which hammered on the protection, conservation, and restoration of natural ecosystems such as forests.

according to project drawdown, if global adoption of clean cookstoves grows to 16% by 2050, 15.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions will be reduced. as the world prepares to unite for the 27th u.n. conference in egypt to reflect on the progress with pledges and commitments to accelerate global actions in the climate fight, ibamie hopes that access to clean cooking will give climate delegates food for thought.

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[editor’s note: this transcript was edited for clarity.]

• what is the cop26 draft text — and what does it mean? this article explains how this starting document was drafted by the uk presidency and reflects what has been shared in glasgow over cop26. next, each delegation consulted with their country’s leadership and proposed revisions. 

• the new draft of the cop26 agreement was released early friday. will all 197 parties sign it, following these revisions? this cnn analysis says it includes “unprecedented language” around fossil fuels, despite pressure from the coal, oil, and gas industries, but it essentially defers more action on emissions until cop27. 

• together, china and u.s. say they’ll “enhance” climate action. the countries, the two largest climate polluters, vowed to do more to cut greenhouse gases in a joint “glasgow declaration” that commits beijing to addressing its methane emissions. 

• how can we measure success at cop? why can’t the cop swoop in and save us? so how do we critically reflect on what the conference can do for us while acknowledging its shortcomings — and not giving up hope?

thanks for following us during this series! you can see planet forward’s other cop26-related coverage in the road to cop26 and climate hits home. 

within the chemical sciences department at ornl, postdoc neil williams describes his work as creative problem-solving. when asked in an interview why he took a position at ornl as a researcher, he replied, “i really like to solve problems. many scientists and engineers are this way. we can’t stand not having an answer to something.” his current energy problem to solve? climate change.

by the late 19th century, scientists had begun to argue that human emissions of greenhouse gases could, in theory, change our relatively stable climate. by the 1960’s, carbon dioxide, or co2, had been identified as a prime contributor to the warming greenhouse effect. due to sustained global fossil fuel use, atmospheric co2 has increased 45% since the greenhouse effect was first theorized 150 years ago, as reported by noaa’s earth system research laboratory. in response, scientists and ceo’s have recently shifted their focus from prevention to mitigation in the form of co2-capture technologies.

williams, under principal investigator radu custelcean, recently stumbled upon a unique form of this co2-capture technology, which he thinks will offer the market an energy-efficient, cost-effective alternative to technologies already on the market. using commonplace items like a household humidifier and a solar hotdog cooker, williams and his team were able to create a small-scale direct air capture (dac) mechanism which can capture, store, and release co2 from both co2-saturated industrial flue gas and air in the environment with relatively minimal energy consumption.

typical dac processes involve passing air over a solid or liquid co2-sorbing agent. the (usually alkaline or basic) co2-sorbing agent will bind with molecules of co2, effectively lowering the concentration of co2 in the air. before the co2-sorbing agents can be used again, they must be heated to release the co2 they’ve bound with. the released co2 can then be stored for commercial applications or permanently sequestered from the atmosphere. the process is cyclical and energy-intensive and commonly used to scrub co2 from industrial flue gas streams with high concentrations of co2.

custelcean and williams offer two potential major improvements on this traditional method of scrubbing co2 from both co2-laden flue gas streams as well as environmental air. their method introduces new, potentially less-corrosive sorption media in the form of aqueous amino-acid solutions and a new sequestration and release medium in the form of an organic salt called 2,6-pyridine-bis(iminoguanidine), or big for short. there have been relatively few new methods of dac introduced into literature in recent years, and existing methods require temperatures up to 800 degrees celsius (about as hot as a glowing lava flow), whereas williams and his team achieved co2 release between 80 and 120 degrees celsius (the temperature range of your average sauna).

on the team’s goal, williams said, “what we’re aiming to do is create a technology that can perform just as well as what’s on the market…that can remove co2 very effectively and rapidly, then store that co2 from the solution by scrubbing that solution with compounds we developed called bigs. where our technology is a great improvement on what’s already been developed is that we dropped the energy associated with recycling or regenerating the sorbents by introducing these bigs.” employing a household humidifier to wick co2 from the air and a solar hot dog oven to then release that co2 using the thermal energy provided by the sun’s rays, the team was able to produce consistent, scalable results that offer a completely new mechanism to the field of co2 scrubbing. their plan is to finesse the solutions using their benchtop pilot model before eventually experimenting at large-scale, industrial sites.

quoting a paper from the national academy of sciences, williams asserted that co2 sequestration will be vitally important for mitigating the effects of climate change in the future, claiming that even if we stopped emitting co2 from all sources, the amount of co2 already in the atmosphere would continue to drive up global temperatures on inertia alone. “so it’s important to not only focus on zero-emission standards but also to find a low-energy way to remove co2 directly from the atmosphere,” williams argued. “also, there are companies out there that need co2 for commercial purposes, and they’re saying, ‘if i can just pull it directly from air, i don’t need to pay people for it. i can just go do that myself.’ so streamlining this technology incentivizes companies to employ it in their factories and production facilities.”

there’s a quote attributed to isaac asimov on a magnet stuck to the filing cabinet in williams’ office: “the most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, ‘eureka! i’ve found it,’ but, ‘that’s funny!’” down the hall, a colleague has a comic taped up outside his office door that says, “research is what happens when you have no idea what you’re doing.” global warming is a new foe in humanity’s fight for survival on planet earth, and co2 is the central culprit. if we are to stand a chance against the ill effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, our species will not be saved by a glamorous figure who makes a grand gesture that saves us all in one fell swoop. instead, our survival depends on scientists like williams, in labs like ornl, with household humidifiers and hotdog cookers in hand, taking a second look at data and saying, “that’s funny…”

according to the 2017 annual united nations report on world food security and nutrition, the number of people affected by hunger has increased by 38 million since 2016. as 11% of the global population suffers from hunger, violent conflicts and climate-related shocks are predicted to only exacerbate the trend.

lee was no stranger to the concept of hunger when he launched rescuing leftover cuisine. as a child of korean immigrants, he grew up witnessing the power of hard work and the beauty of the american dream. he also experienced what it was like to be hungry, despite living in the land of “the supersized meal.” he would think: “how can 1 in 7 people in america be hungry while 40% of all food in the united states gets tossed annually?” (a stat from the national resources defense council.)

where others saw a frustrating paradox between food waste and global hunger, lee identified an opportunity. using his financial background he calculated that this wastage could serve 58,064,516,129 meals (based on the national average of $2.79/meal). with the inspiration of a college organization, lee partnered with classmate, louisa chen, to tackle hunger by launching rescuing leftover cuisine. the mission was simple: help the hungry by saving quality food that would otherwise go to waste.

a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, rescuing leftover cuisine partners with restaurants to rescue quality leftover food and ensure it reaches those who need it. since the organization’s new york launch in 2013, the model has thrived. in 5 years, they have rescued 2.1 million pounds of food, created 1.6 million meals for the hungry, prevented more than 330 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents from being emitted into the environment, and expanded to 16 cities — and even more are interested. rescuing leftover cuisine selected their new cities from 300 eager branch applicants.

when asked “what makes this company so successful?” lee immediately points to the mission: eliminating food waste by feeding hungry families. every aspect of the organization is intentional and purpose driven. his goal for food efficiency is reflected in the organization’s operational efficiencies. for instance, transportation between the partner restaurants and homeless shelters is crowd sourced and volunteer run. a key factor in the organization’s success is this localized engagement. again, technology enables rescuing leftover cuisine to communicate seamlessly between partner restaurants and volunteers. a web application allows restaurants to report excess food and volunteers to be notified accordingly. rescuing leftover cuisine further promotes efficiency by offering reports and analyses to partner restaurants of their excess food purchases and suggestions on how to avoid food waste. “even if this means less donated food in the short-term,” explained lee, “it will contribute to more positive long-term impacts.”

rescuing leftover cuisine is led by determined and passionate people with a background in this work. lee himself spent four years at new york university learning about saving quality food with a campus club that took cafeteria leftovers to local homeless shelters. he combines that experience with his academic and professional background in finance to guide the non-profit to success. after spending just a few minutes speaking with lee, you will note his commitment to due diligence and his contagious enthusiasm for this work.

while he fights hunger directly by connecting the hungry with quality food, lee is also thinking about the future. “climate change is a key issue in our organization,” he says. “when the 40% of food wasted annually in the u.s. reaches a landfill, it generates methane.” methane is a greenhouse gas that is 23 times as potent as carbon dioxide in trapping heat within the atmosphere. “we eat three meals a day,” lee explained, “if we can get people thinking about their impact on this level, we can make a clear difference.”

lee’s diligent work ethic and forward thinking helped land him a spot on forbes 30 under 30 list for social entrepreneurship. it is evident that saving the rest of the metaphorical big apple is only the beginning for rescuing leftover cuisine. with a model that has proven successful and scalable, the organization plans to focus on increasing impact across its 16 cities in the near-term. rescuing leftover cuisine’s focus on community-driven change is helping tackle global hunger one city (and leftover) at a time.

washington — the university of michigan is investing millions of dollars to create technologies that capture carbon dioxide and turn it into commercial products, but some experts say this approach might not help reduce greenhouse gas or fit in well with the market demand.

the michigan program, which received $4.5 million in seed money from the michigan engineering school and other fundraising activities, aims to build technologies that capture carbon dioxide directly from the air and find ways to convert the gas into commercial materials that private companies can used, the university said wednesday. the goal is to extract the equivalent of 10% of current carbon dioxide emissions each year by 2030.

currently, some companies seeking to offset the high cost of carbon dioxide capture sell the gas to food industries as raw material for carbonated drinks and dry ice used in food preservation, said colin mccormick, chief technologist at valence strategic, a consultancy firm specializing in disruptive technologies and energy industries.

but carbon dioxide locked in those products evaporates after only a few days or weeks and cycles back into the air, which is contradictory to the conventional idea of storing greenhouse gas permanently.

“as you use [the captured carbon dioxide] and release it, you need to capture it and use it again; then it still helps,” said volker sick, a mechanical engineering professor at university of michigan. “but if it’s not bound for long, the effect for the atmosphere is not good.”

scientists have been exploring techniques to imprison carbon dioxide permanently in building materials such as concrete, said sick, who leads the michigan program, called the global co2 initiative. the program has worked on using the gas to make high-flexibility concrete that can be used to build roads and bridges in areas with high risk of earthquakes, sick said.

however, the concrete market may not be big enough to absorb the amount of carbon dioxide that can be captured, said justin ong, a policy associate at the clearpath foundation, a clean energy advocacy group.

he noted that technology companies are capturing carbon dioxide from power plants, which is cheaper than extracting the gas directly from the air.

“if we capture all of the power plant emissions from one coal power plant and turn that into concrete, it would pretty much meet the demand of concrete for the entire region,” ong said. “if you’re talking about capturing emissions from multiple power plants and turning them into concrete, you will have so much concrete, but it would be worthless.”

the current technology that extracts carbon dioxide directly from the air can cost companies about $300 per ton, he said. however, the federal tax credit for capturing carbon dioxide and putting it into other commercial uses is only $35 a ton.

even though some gas-to-product conversion technologies fail to remove carbon dioxide from the air permanently, they are still a good start, said klaus lackner, director of center for negative carbon emissions at arizona state university.

by making a sustainable profit from the products, companies have incentives to continue testing and perfecting techniques that capture carbon dioxide, which will drive down costs for the new technology, lackner said.

apart from reducing the cost for carbon dioxide capture technology, companies also can look into opportunities to convert the gas into high-value materials, sick said.

one possibility is carbon fiber, an expensive, lightweight material used in luxury bicycles and race cars. if automobiles and airplanes were made with carbon fiber-based materials instead of heavier steel and aluminum, they would require smaller engines and less fuel, sick said.

“if there’s an interest in using carbon fiber and selling it for a large profit, then the use of co2 actually becomes attractive,” sick said.

what will it take to reach this goal? the intergovernmental panel on climate change, a coalition of climate scientists from around the globe, have laid out the maximum amount of co2 that can be emitted into the atmosphere while still maintaining the 2°c increase in temperature. this threshold is called the carbon budget.

what is the carbon budget?

to understand the carbon budget that the ipcc has created, we must understand the timeline of carbon pollution.

according to the union of concerned scientists, the estimated total carbon released in the atmosphere between 1751 and 2014 was 1,480 gigatons. of this, 743 gigatons (or 50.2%) of all emissions came after 1988.

the mercator institute of research on global commons and climate change has estimated that we have about 760 gigatons left in our carbon budget as of 2017. they also estimate at present, the world is still emitting 40 gigatons a year. if nations around the world do not commit to the objectives in the paris climate agreement, we are looking at an exhaustion of our carbon budget in just 19 years.

the ipcc has estimated that we’ve currently spent over half of our carbon budget which stands at 2,240 gigatons of carbon, putting us on track to see over 2°c of warming within the next three decades if we stay on our current course.

using the ipcc model for the carbon budget, carbon brief has concluded that as of 2017, we only have 4 years left until we inevitably surpass 1.5°c of global warming. however, their analysis also showed that as of 2016, emission rates have been slowing down, suggesting signs of peaking.

why all the fuss about 2°c?

there is a common consensus within the scientific community that we must limit the remainder of our carbon budget to stay within 2°c in warming. when climate scientists were first figuring out the effects of co2 on the atmosphere back in the 1970’s – “early calculations suggested that if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over pre-industrial levels, the earth would warm somewhere between 1.5°c and 4.5°c,” according to vox.

the next question was: how much of this warming can humans tolerate with minimal danger to human life? temperature graphing has shown throughout human history, humans have lived within a temperature range that fluctuates between -1/1° celsius. it becomes increasingly worrisome to think of a world where temperatures are more than double the upper limit that humans have ever experienced.

the scientific community has a wide range of assessments calculating the risks global warming could pose to human life.

we’ve already seen the increased risks that our current carbon output has produced:

wildfires tend to be associated with hotter, drier weather, meaning that an increased climate is prone to producing more wildfires.

the oceans, at the current level they are rising, will put millions of lives at risk. as ocean surges continue to wreak havoc on our coastal cities, mass migrations are sure to ensue, causing political and economic turmoil for the more than 1 billion people living in low-lying areas.

increasing ocean temperatures have been linked to higher frequencies of more intense hurricanes. severe rainfall occurrences will increase along the eastern coast of the u.s  as a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture: “we think that harvey type of rainfalls will become noticeably more frequent as the century goes on,” said kerry emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at mit.

extreme droughts in areas like california and the midwest, are expected to increase as temperatures rise, resulting in severe agricultural damage and water shortages around the world.

these extreme weather related events already are becoming more frequent, and the earth hasn’t even reached the 1.5° c mark yet. if we can’t keep temperatures from surpassing 2°c, the risks to human life are only going to get worse.

we’ve got to make the budget but how?

“it is still not too late to limit the warming. staying below 2°c requires social, financial, and technical actions by 2020 on a global scale,” said veerabhadran ramanathan, chair of the committee and distinguished professor at the scripps institution of oceanography in san diego.

elsewhere in the united states, social action is being taken by governors, mayors, public officials, and educational and business leaders who have signed on to the we are still in pact. this agreement represents one third of the u.s. population and their mission is to meet the goals set out in the paris climate agreement, even if the federal government does not intend to.

and according to the new york times, the united states already has delivered $1 billion of the $3 billion in financial aid it has agreed to pay under the paris climate agreement, to assist poor nations in the fight against climate change.

technological action also is on the rise as negative emissions technologies, such as biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (beccs for short), are receiving increased attention in the climate science community.

ultimately though, we need global cooperation to combat climate change, and the paris climate agreement was a great first step. we have the means to reach the carbon budget, we just need the political will and global pressure to keep the earth on track to staying under 2°c.

pacific lutheran university is piloting an educational and participatory program to begin mitigating one of the largest contributors to plu’s carbon emissions – study abroad air miles. when the new president reaffirmed plu’s commitment to carbon neutrality by 2020 by signing the acupcc, the study away and sustainability centers partnered to meet this goal in a meaningful manner.   global education is a pathway to distinction at plu.  however, as a result our study away program contributes 19.4 percent of the university’s total carbon footprint at over 3,700 mtco2e.

plu has dropped its co2 emissions by 17 percent, but in order to reach neutrality, we knew we would need to invest in a third party offset.  the concern was that traditional offsets would not meet the need for education and connection in students who were travelling.  plu sought the help of an organization that is redefining the false concept of offsetting one’s carbon footprint by reframing it as “onsetting”, earth deeds. their focus is increasing carbon consciousness by providing tools to measure, manage and reduce our ecological impact and support community-based sustainability projects. such projects are not necessarily certified by a third party nor are they measurable in terms of carbon neutrality. rather, the projects have a meaningful and positive environmental impact on the local community.

students calculate their individual carbon footprint, offset a portion, and then onset to a sustainability project in a community that plu students are affiliated with.