[Stoves] What poor means?

[Fireside Hearth]

Hello Dean, 

    Just a thought on your idea. As a new manufacturer of a "small space heater" with cooking capabilities, we would just love this. BUT, our stove is completely made of stainless steel, making it a life time appliance. It runs cleaner than anything I sold, installed, or maintained in my 26 years as a hearth professional. We decided to have our stove made here in the states rather than exploiting children and the environment as many folks do today.......ie China. 
    As a "newbie" to the process I have an aversion to the gambling of our future on the "carbon Credit" trading system which has been reported to be full of possible corruption. We once took part in the E.P.A. "great stove change out" program, where many dealers got screwed by our own Government who never came through with the promises they made......I would not trust this program with the future of our business.
    What our dream looks like is to get enough sales in markets which will support the retail cost of our product so that we can afford to subsidize our technology in these economies where it would make the biggest impact.
    If you are interested you may view our web site at http://www.unforgettablefirellc.com

               Maybe as a group we can figure out how to make these ideas come to fruition, however I really do not suggest gambling on anything set up by ANY government agency.

             Roger and Bridget Lehet

Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:13:16 -0800
From: deankstill at gmail.com
To: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Stoves] What poor means?

Hi Phil,

I think that if we factor in the ill health and climate change caused by incomplete combustion of biomass, society as a whole saves money by subsidizing the 50% fuel reduction and 90% emission reduction cooking stove. However, as Bryan Wilson points out in his presentations, the bottom of the pyramid consumer is not motivated to pay for these improvements.


My hope is that someone will be smart enough and stubborn enough to manufacture a market driven stove that meets the 50% and 90% level of performance. And, the necessary push to accomplish this difficult task would be very much assisted by a firm order for 1 million stoves from some motivated funder who also locates and secures the distribution network.


Making the 50% and 90% stove is the relatively easy part. I would guess that the commercial distribution side is 10 times harder. I can imagine distributing 100 million stoves by selling at the market price to cooks who then use the stoves and the funder makes the money back on the carbon credits. 


 I hear that Envirofit is doing something along these lines?

All Best,

Dean

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Phil Hughes <nicafyl at gmail.com> wrote:

The $2/day number can clearly mean very different things in different places. I live in rural Nicaragua and can offer some data that at least fits here. And here is a place where fuel-efficient stoves really are needed.


For those with work, $2/day is the going wage. There are lots of people who seldom work so $2/day/family in this area as far as cash income is pretty high. That said, most people have enough land to grow much of what they eat and few have any debts.


The cash gets spent on batteries for radios, cooking oil, salt, sugar, rice and minimally on clothing. That's really about it. But, having no savings and living day-to-day on what they have is typical. That is, if they had a good week they might buy batteries for the radio but, if not, just not listen to it.


Health care and education are free so they are non-issues (for pretty low quality for each). That pretty well defines rural life here.
Telling someone they can reduce fuel consumption by 50%, get rid of smoke in the house and such is not going to compute if an investment is needed. They will walk farther to cut wood for cooking and pretend the smoke is a non-issue. Thus, these people are unlikely to get excited about "something better" if an investment is needed.


What will work is if they can go to a workshop showing them how to make a stove using mud and something that is available as scrap or given to them. Beyond that, good luck.
-- 

Phil Hughes 

nicafyl at gmail.com






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