A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 257The Fate of Small ProjectsThe CDM’s market structure biases itagainst small community-based projects,which tend not to be able to afford thehigh transaction costs necessary for eachscheme (see Chapter 3). In India, for example,the Barefoot College has trained20 – 30 solar engineers, who have installedgrid solar power stations and solar lanternsacross the country. Such projects ‘have difficultyaccessing CDM finance,’ accordingto Bunker Roy of the College, due tothe need for ‘upfront financing’ and ‘bundling’projects together to save on transactioncosts. 70Another project, the FaL-G Brick Project,aims to promote fly ash bricks as an alternativeto burnt clay bricks in the Indian constructionsector. Fly ash, a waste productfrom thermal power plants, is mixed withlime from the acetylene industry and gypsumfrom chemical plants to form a materialfor making bricks that requires less fossilenergy than conventional materials.The process is unsustainable in that it relieson a fossil fuel-intensive industry, whoselifespan it would extend through sales ofcarbon credits. In addition, fly ash poses ahealth hazard to the workers who handleit. The project thus adds to the numbersof people suffering health risks due to fossilfuels in two ways: by prolonging fossilfuel pollution around thermal power plantsbuying the credits, and by bringing a newgroup into contact with hazardous fly ash.The FaL-G project would ordinarily besubject to the same market handicap assmall solar projects, since the brickmakersto be included tend to be small operationsand the ‘volume of emission rightsgenerated by an individual plant is clearlynot sufficient to treat an individual plantas a separate small-scale CDM project’.The World Bank’s Community DevelopmentCarbon Fund, however, has steppedin to make it possible to ‘bundle’ togetherhundreds of these tiny plants – located instates as distant from each other as TamilNadu, Karnataka, Orissa, Uttar Pradeshand Punjab – under a single project umbrella,streamlining costs. 71What’s sponge iron?Sponge iron is an impure form of the metal obtained from removingthe oxygen from iron ore. Its manufacture requires a lot of water andenergy supplied by gas or, more frequently, coal.In what ways is it environmentally damaging?In Chhattisgarh state, the most polluted in the country, sponge ironfactories have contaminated drinking water and, by lifting huge quantitiesof water from rivers and irrigation canals, lowered water tables. 73Sponge iron works, which are subsidized by the state, also cause heavyair pollution, often in breach of pollution control norms, affectinghealth and agriculture. As of 2005, 33 out of 48 sponge iron units inChhatisgarh were operating without having obtained statutory clear-