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About 660 million in India and 1 billion in Africa burn renewables like wood or biomass for cooking, heating and daily energy needs. We could learn from them.

• triceratops 1mo ago
  Thanks for the sources. So not billions but still more than I'd have expected. Also the 1 billion number from Africa includes people burning kerosene. That isn't biomass. > We could learn from them. I sense sarcasm. It's an ugly worldview.
• phtrivier 1mo ago
  In a sense, when we use scraps from agriculture in a methanizer to produce "bio" gaz, we are "learning" from people still using biomass. It's just that we mediate it through ch4 to avoid some of the worst health risk. The problem is of course that we don't use "scraps" so much as "purposefully using fossil fuels to grow stuff that we won't eat and burn instead". There's a startup to build around "disrupting food wastes from gen-Z". Like a "reverse" dashdoor, where people would drive e-bikes door to door to collect your compostables, and sell the gaz / fertilizer. Then the next version will not collect food scraps, but other forms of... Let's say "valuable organic matter currently wasted in big cities" ;) But I doubt VCs would rush to fund something like "UberPoop"... Unless we find a way to get views on HN by bringing "AI" in the mix, or writing the client in Rust :P