WindLift Power

“Now, if a UK citizen flies to India on a holiday to see the Taj Mahal, he can cleanse himself of the guilt of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted from burning fuel by ensuring farmer families in India stop using diesel pump sets and instead begin pumping water manually.”

This from a Sept. 18 article in The Times of India. It turns out that a farmer in India would have to spend 3 years on a treadle pump to offset the carbon emissions from that trip to the Taj Mahal.

Treadle pumps are a great step up for people faced with no other option for pumping, but the logic of abandoning diesel pumps for treadle pumps escapes me. The average human being can only put out 0.1-0.2 kilowatts of power (1 kW=1.4 horsepower). This means that in abandoning even a small 2 kW diesel pump a person would have to work the treadle pump 20 times as long to equal the same energy output.

My last thought is… don’t people exhale carbon dioxide when they physically exert themselves? How much extra carbon is emitted growing and transporting the extra food people on treadle pumps need to consume?

Perhaps the surest signal of western excess is Americans and Britons driving to the gym, hopping on a stairmaster, pumping away for 30 minutes in air conditioning, watching 8 televisions, all the while drinking imported bottled water. Imagine if you had to work the stair-master for 2-6 hours in 110 degree heat to feed your family. This is why anyone who can afford it prefers diesel and electric pumps.

The purpose of the WindLift project is to give people a renewable, affordable choice of pumping power for when they have the resources to advance to mechanized pumping methods. Carbon-credits are great as far as they encourage the efficient usage of fossil fuels. Unfortunately they have become another rationalization for conspicuous consumption. I believe that people should have the freedom to consume as much as they can afford. Governments waste far more resources than any individuals. But offsetting guilt by paying someone in a developing country to lower their standard of living is not a sustainable approach.