Last year Channel 4 made a major exposé on the Biomass Stove Carbon Credit scam specifically naming US based C-Quest Capital and detailing how most of their distributed stoves in Malawi were out of commission, but still accruing phantom Carbon credits. As someone who's been deeply involved in developing high-efficiency, low-smoke Biomass Stoves with a patent-pending design, I am not surprised.
Having
seen many of the stoves distributed by these so-called Carbon Credit
companies, I can tell you first-hand that the claimed efficiency figures
are laughable. Most of these stoves are poorly made, flimsy, and to
put it bluntly, absolute garbage! Worse still, their methods for
calculating carbon credits? Accountant meets the Phantom Menace, in
other words a spreadsheet fantasy.
Last year, C-Quest Capital's Indian
subsidiary approached me for my patent pending biomass stove design. Long story short,
they wanted a few units for testing, made me jump through endless hoops
for their paperwork, and even had me sign NDAs with their U.S. office,
then again sign a contract and submit a quote to their Indian
subsidiary in Delhi. The order finally came from some shady firm
registered in Bangalore. They also gave me an impossible deadline, which I told them right away that it was not possible to meet, but they implored that I give it a shot and promised an advance.
I ended up
wasting two months—one in paperwork, the next trying to get the
prototype done—cancelling two flights only on the insistence of one of their
top Delhi executives, a fellow Assamese. I never received the advance,
but instead, got an obnoxious chiding WhatsApp message from some HR
flunky, while their top guy who first contacted me and was responsible
for pushing me, started ghosting. I dropped the project and cursed the
day I agreed to work with them, but never regretted my decision, despite
the loss of time, effort, and money.
It
didn't take much time to deduct that their whole operation was a sham
and as translucent and smokey as their supposedly 50% efficient stoves,
which they were handing out to rake in carbon credits. The
more I learned, the less I wanted anything to do with them.
Now the icing
on the cake? The same top executive— the fellow Assamese—who later left the
company, is the same Tridip Goswami who now being dragged to the Supreme Court with criminal charges by the US
government for fraud along with his former Boss.
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.
As insipid as the episode was, I guess not all bad things happen in vain.
It's a
shame that something that had the potential to genuinely helping poor
communities and the environment by reducing deforestation is being
exploited in this cynical way. But isn't everything these days?
