New green brick kilns can be money spinner for Bangladesh

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Two women workers busy making bricks using HHK technology at Diamond Auto Brick Plant at Bolta in Narayanganj Sunday. — FE photo

Munima Sultana
Bangladesh can earn US$70 million and more a year --- enough to build another bridge on the river Karnaphuli --- from global carbon trading by reducing emission of its thousands of brickfields.
A Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) study shows that country has more than 6000 traditional brick kilns and they emit 8.75 millions tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which can be halved to 4.16 million tonnes by adopting clean brick-burning technology.
A traditional brick kiln consumes 24 tonnes of coal a year and emits some 1500 tonnes of C02, making it one of the worst green house gas pollutant in the country.
Experts said the emission could be halved if the kilns burn bricks by using a German-invented technology, called Hybrid Hoffman Kiln (HHK), now popular in China.
The amount of carbon this technology would reduce --- provided all of the country's bricks are produced by using the HHK --- could fetch at least $70 million through the global carbon credit market launched by the United Nations, said Syed Tanveer Hussain, head of Climate Action Bangladesh Limited.
He said the emission reduction rate known as Certified Emission Reduction (CER) has been fixed at $ 15.20 per tonne, which is likely to soar more than two times after the Climate Conference in Copenhagen.
"The country can immensely benefit by selling the amount of carbon it can save through using latest green technology such as the HHK," Hussain said.
At present, four brick factories have adopted HHK, earning 23,200 tonnes of CER annually while 16 more brickfields were in the process of replacing their environmentally hazardous kilns with the clean technology.
"If they start using the HHK, the country's total emission reduction capacity would cross 116,000 tonnes a year," he added.
Out of the emitted amount, Danish government has already bought 40,000 tonnes of CER through the global carbon trading set under the Kyoto Protocol, ahead of the Copenhagen summit.
The Danes bought the carbon from the Bangladeshi brickfields after a delegation of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) certified the credit by visiting the sites recently.
Zaydul Abedin, who first used the HHK technology in his Diamond Auto Brick plant, said his company alone has earned 5,800 tonnes of CER from a single kiln having the capacity to burn 1.5 million bricks annually.
He said the HHK emits tiny percentage of CO2 to the air as coal-mixed brick absorbs the carbon and help cut its use during burning
While talking to the FE at his brickfield at Vulata in Nayarangaj on Saturday Zaydul said a traditional brickfield uses 0.24 tonnes of coals to produce 0.1 million bricks. But HHK brings it down to 0.13 tonnes.
Matiul Islam, Chairman of Industrial and Infrastructure
Development Finance Company Ltd (IIDFCL) which financed Zaydul's brickfield with support from the World Bank, hailed the HHK technology as a big success.
"We have seen that this new technology is energy efficient and at the same time it produces high quality bricks," he told the FE, adding state support is needed to introduce the latest technology in all of the country's brickfields.
"A single unit traditional brick kiln needs only Tk10 million investment while a HHK costs at least Tk 100 million," he said.
He urged the government to be proactive in pushing the technology nationwide, as it would massively improve air quality in the country and also help capture a sizable portion of the multi-billion dollar CDM market.
He suggested creation of a refinancing scheme by the Bangladesh Bank and forming consortium of banks to jointly fund the clean technology
"We need at least $1.3 billion investment to replace the country's all 6000 brick kilns with the HHK. But conversion of 700 kilns alone can help us meet the target and it would cost only Tk 10 billion," the chairman said.
Asaduzzaman Khan, IIDFCL Managing Director, said although the new technology is costly, it would create jobs for hundreds of thousands of rural people including women.
"It will also ensure better health and safety for the workers as these are important components of the CDM," he added.