[Stoves] What will people pay for a stove?

Mon Nov 29 18:33:46 CST 2010

Dear Charlie

There are several fashionable things emerging in the stove market. One is micro-finance for stoves to make them more accessible. Because of the quality of ordinary products stoves have to be quite presentable and last well to be objects of finance, micro or otherwise.

I caution that repeating this “TLUD’s are much cleaner” idea which falls from everyone’s lips so easily has to be heard with a grain of salt. Yes they can be clean (we see very little quoted for actual whole burn tests however) but they are cleaner than the pretty poor combustion of something else.

A TLUD is not “a lot cleaner” than a decent paraffin stove, nor a good alcohol stove, nor a natural gas stove nor any of a variety of fan stoves or chimney stoves which burn a variety of fuels.

I can substitute the fuel names with bio-paraffin, bio-ethanol, biogas according to fashion. Bio-paraffin is light fraction bio-diesel, if you have not heard of it.

Burning cleaner than something that does not burn well is not news.

Convincing people (including me) that biochar is more agriculturally productive than a whole host of equally labour-investing alternatives is important. People should not use char making stoves “because TLUD’s are clean”. Lots of stoves are clean. I have read a lot about biochar and it is interesting and I am still watching for more news. We can’t compare biochar in soil alone however because that is only part of the equation. Leaving leaf litter in the forest, cutting less, providing more high level shade and so on all contribute to productivity. Charring the ground cover and burying it comes at a price. It is not free.

I currently have the privilege of working with some breathtakingly clean burning stoves that do not produce char. Major markets for improved stoves are urban. The cost of getting urban char into rural fields will have to be borne by the ‘system’ that advocates it. Various arguments, asides actually, are offered. It needs to be a whole argument, a complete case where benefits exceed costs.

Regards

Crispin

+++++++++

I changed the subject line because we were drifting, and retained Crispin's comments below because they bring up good points.  We seem to be mixing up what people "can" pay (e.g. if they take into account their fuel expense savings due to a new stove, or possible future income from biochar) and what they "will" pay.  Too often we seem to be assuming that all of the world follows first world logic in making financial decisions - we all may hope to choose a new appliance based on a careful analysis of the different models available and the potential cost savings, but people in other circumstances often reason in other ways.  During my stove projects in Central/South America I certainly see the leaking of cash on hand - no matter how low the local income, kids seem to have money for a frozen chocolate covered banana, and I once saw an entire ice cream cart hauled by truck high into the Andes to deliver treats to a distant weekly market.  Even people with low incomes want some of it to be disposable, and I doubt that we are easily going to be able to change that by insisting that sacrificing their little pleasures (to save and buy a stove) might be in their best interest.  We have lots of information available to us when making such decisions, and we value what we read and hear, but what if in a different culture they are used to only believing what they experience for themselves?

Another leakage I see often is for alcohol - women in some areas know that they must spend all of their money by the weekend, or it will be spent by someone on whatever the local alcoholic beverage is.  It is likely that they don't see that they have another option for now - saving money in banks has not been something that people in their situation do, and until we change that then leakage will be all too common and improved stoves mostly too expensive.  Microfinance (experiencing problems right now in India) is one approach, but micro-savings is something I expect we'll be seeing more of:

http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/gates-foundation-to-give-500-million.html

And as we know, making such financial services options available to women is particularly important - they tend to gather the fuel and get the most exposure to smoke.  But they don't necessarily make spending (or savings) decisions for the family, and that situation is hard to change.

The western stoving community still too often seems fixated on technical aspects of getting improved stoves into the marketplace, when we need to spend a little more time trying to think like our potential customers.  For example, before we push biochar from stoves, shouldn't we be soliciting reports from the field on efforts to determine if people are willing to divert potential cooking fuel to their fields - based on the scanty evidence that we can provide to them on potential agricultural benefits?  We may have published papers that support our point of view - certainly we are learning more every day - but can we presently offer a persuasive explanation that low income families will accept?  Thinking like a single mother who is probably already overwhelmed with responsibilities, it is hard for me to justify paying more for a char producing stove when no one has yet demonstrated to me more of the vegetables my family eats from the soil type in my own backyard with the amount of char I will produce.  TLUDs of course have other benefits - low emissions, cleaner pots, possibilities for cheaper fuels, etc. - and those we can easily demonstrate to people, so we should start with these.

The only ICS that is successful is one that people will buy and keep using in an efficient manner (and recommend to their neighbors) - how can we design stoves and stove programs so that this happens?  I suggest that it is by spending a little more time being realistic about sociocultural issues within our target communities, instead of imagining that they think just like we do.  What choices to people have, and how do they make them?

Charlie 

  _____  

From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at gmail.com>
Dear Boston

In Zambia, a charcoal stove that costs more than $3.50 won’t sell. The standard one is $1.50.

The reason is the inability to accumulate that much cash. I have seen work by Cecil Cooking showing that ten days income is the maximum cash people can generally accumulate (about 1/3 of a month’s income). Above that is starts to leak out of the pocket.

$10 is above the cost people can usually pay for a stove. $5 has a chance without finance (like two payments).

Here in Ulaanbaatar people can afford to pay $75 if it is financed, no problem. The Xas Bank is doing exactly that. The stoves are subsidised by $50 as well (it is actually a $125 stove). It saves about $300 per heating season so it is a no-brainer if financing is offered.

Regards

Crispin

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20101130/09e9fb63/attachment.html>