[Stoves] Example of missed opportunities was Re: is this new?

[rongretlarson at comcast.net]

Cecil etal 

Few inserts below (Have snipped about a third - but keeping all of your materials) 

----- Original Message -----
From: "Cecil Cook" <cec1863 at gmail.com> 
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org> 
Cc: "Iwan BASKORO" <i.baskoro at geres.eu>, "Hugh McLaughlin" <wastemin1 at verizon.net>, "Bob Fairchild" <solarbobky at yahoo.com> 
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 6:04:24 AM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Example of missed opportunities was Re: is this new? 









Dear Ron and also Crispin, Kevin, Iwan, and all, 



Before I begin, let me say that - if you are the Ron Larson who as a much younger man worked for SERI in Colorado - then I our paths have crossed a couple of times back in the mid 1970's when I was helping to get NCAT up and running and for some reason caught a ride with you - probably in Denver. As I recall A K Reddy from the Bangalore Institute of S&T was a passenger and I clearly recall a very interesting discussion with him about whether the ethnicity and race of a scientist made any difference in India when it comes to discovering and delivering more AT solutions to the socio-economic problems of Indian villagers. His answer was (in effect) the following: as an essential next step in their own decolonialization, it was critically important for Indians scientists and AT-ers to visibly assume leadership roles - and to be seen to be actively taking responsibility for solving the technology problems of Indian villagers . 





[RWL1: Guilty - same Larson. I first met Prof. Reddy a few years before SERI - maybe 19 76 - when he h oste d a meeting on T echnology Assessment in Bangalor e. I now (vaguely ) recall his stay at SERI - but confess to not recalling the auto trip you describe. Amulya was an impressive scientist and I am not surprised at the gist of the conversation you recall - with which fully agree. His obituary is worth reading. ] 

W hen I worked in DC from 1973-1975, I did work some on the Congressional side of the formation of NCAT. I remember esp ecially later working with Jerry Plunkett. It is great to see NCAT folk working with biochar now. I later worked (1981-82) for USAID in Sudan and we might have bumped into each other there. Maybe also 2002 at J o hannesburg UN meeting? I congratulate you for being so active for so long in all AT areas.] 




I then remember AK Reddy saying something about: you are welcome to play a helping role, but it is important for Indian scientists and technologists to 'liberate' themselves from old paradigms and take responsibility for helping Indian villagers arrive at the most appropriate solutions to the challenges they face (or words to that effect). 



Back on those days of the mid 1970's Black (and Small) were seen as being so Beautiful that middle class, patriarchal Mid-American 'whiteboys' - especially privileged well educated young white men - were under attack from all sides. We were disqualified from holding leadership positions in the struggle to create a new America by African Americans, Hispanics, women of any ethnicity and class background, indigenous Americans, representatives of historically disadvantaged Euro-Americans (poor whites), and generic Third Worlders. White male professionals had somehow become the enemy. It was our turn to ride in the back of the bus and let all the others fight about who was in the drivers seat and what direction to take to build a better, more inclusive future. 



I put up a bit of a counter-argument by recalling something another Indian associate of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, the director of the Science for the Villages and also head of the Khadi Village Industries Museum - both in Wandha - had said to me when I asked him the same question. He said: if humanity is a single organism, and that organism has an infection in one finger what happens? I answered by remembering that white blood cells (an unfortunate reference to color!) congregate in the infected body part to isolate and fight the invading bacteria. That was his answer. Reflecting with the wisdom of 40 years of hindsight on my big development disasters and much smaller development successes, I now realize that I probably misunderstood Devendra Kumar when he used his infection of the body metaphor to explain the universalization of responsibility to help Indian villagers and the developing world learn how to appropriately apply science and technology to solve the challenge of producing and supplying affordable and environment friendly energy to power the development of the millions of impoverished villages everywhere. 



I now realize that the 'first responders' to any development crisis need to be those actors and agencies closest to the epi-center of the crisis who are culturally and linguistically competent to engage with those villagers or townspeople. The role of the first responders is to ensure that the indigenous values and ethno-sciences (of stoves, fuels, cooking) are well enough understood by outside scientists, funding agents, and policy makers to: 

    1. create the platforms and bridges necessary for 'western-style' scientists and technologists to constructively engage with villagers and townspeople, 
    2. accurately translate between the cultural patterns and perceptions of indigenous actors to generate the framework of meaning, operator know-how and multiple role player interactions – on one end of the bridge - and the abstract models and variables used by scientists and engineers on the other end that are needed by them to create least cost/maximum benefit stove technology solutions, 
    3. facilitate feedback from villagers and townspeople that accurately captures and communicates outward to stove designers, funding agents and policy makers their preferred technology choices as indicated by in situ focus groups, demonstrations and market testing, and 
    4. ensuring that scientists, technologists, funding agents, governmental policy makers, NGO helpers , etc. actually listen to, correctly read, and then to act in concert to embody the preferences of rural and urban customers in prototype stoves which combine enough value added improvements to be perceived as such good value propositions that stove users want to buy them because of the value they add value to their lives. 
[RWL2: Obviously a good list - but we need to also insert changing global events - in this case global warming. In my mind it dwarfs all other global problems - and stoves can play a key early role because the economics are better here than most places (but not generally recognized). When I first started working on stoves, I had no idea there was a potential big connection to climate issues. No reason to think that the average stove user is going to understand that - or even health issues. I have added Dr. Priya Karve as a cc, as she has given this topic a lot of thought. I hope she will chime in on how to move stove RD&D along more quickly. She and father have been doing great w o rk at ARTI along these inclusion lines. ] 

In summary, the role of the first responder is to mediate between science and culture. Technology is a product of that mediates these two realms of knowing and doing when it is ‘appropriate' for both. Both science and culture are needed for progress to take place. Appropriate technology is the product of the successful marriage and/or cohabitation between these two strange bedfellows. The challenge to innovate more perfect stove technologies has everything to do with directing Kevin's village idiot to draw his circles around a series of different technologically improved stoves, or their component attributes, so that the stove scientists know what kinds of stoves to design, build and test. 



I have found it useful to refer to culturally, economically, and environmentally appropriate stove prototypes as improved stove design 'prescriptions' or 'agendas for stove innovation' . Each of these improved stove prescriptions or targets represents a composite bulls-eye that directs the stove scientist's attention to cost and desired performances. The cost is measured by how much the user group spends on average in money, labour or other resources to purchase and operate the stove for cooking and other functions. A culturally relevant baseline assessment of stove performances also documents the habits (skills) and knowledge of fuels and stove operation that enable the stove using household to get the functional performance they need from their traditional stove. Lastly, the baseline assessment identifies the needs and interests that are fulfilled over the short, medium and long term by the stove technology and measures the strength of these socio-economic and cultural indicators of these needs and interests within the larger socio-economic system. The resulting baseline assessment of the cost and performance indicators of traditional stoves is done on stoves in Battambang (Cambodia), or Yogyakarta Priovince in Indonesia or anywhere else in the world where people burn biomass (increasingly in Greece to keep from freezing on cold nights). 


[RWL3: I haven't g one looking - but don't see enough of this work cited on this list. Anything by yourself we can get?] 




I agree with Kevin when he says stove designers and enthusiasts often get lost in the forest when they search for ever more scientifically perfect stoves - and loose sight of how to simply and concretely test these abstract stoves. They are forgetting to pay attention to the obvious socio-economic baseline realities of particular groups of stove users. They have lost the trees in the forest which provide the socio-economic and stove technology matrix of choices within which people buy and use traditional stoves. In most of SEAsia and much of Africa artisan fabricated traditional stoves retail from $1 to $3 per unit . These cheap industry standard stoves are typically short lived (6 months or less) and typically costly to operate. However, the stove users know how to manage them to get the performance they want from their stoves for cooking food, purifying water, grilling meat and fish, and other home industrial functions. 




What I am discovering in Central Java is that there are probably opportunities for the development of several, perhaps as many as a dozen different types of biomass stoves that are specialized to meet the needs of: 



(1) street level food sellers, 

(2) big outdoor social functions, 

(3to 7) a range of different home industries (more than 4 different products), 

(8 to 9) specialty food preparation, 

(10) restaurants, 

(11) commercial caterers, 

(12) water purification and heating, 

(13) rice cooking, 

(14 to 15) home cooking for small and large families, 

(16 to 20) industrial applications of biomass energy to brick making, producer gas for internal combustion engines, drying operations, etc. 

[RWL 4 : I would drop your last group for th is list - and that of GACC. Certainly a lot of help also needed and some transferabilit y is possible, but not so likely out of that area back towards cook stoves. Not for Central Java, but we need to do better for heating stoves.] 




Some of these biomass stoves will be the same but many will be designed and optimized for particular purposes. 



What I am trying to do is identify the different biomass stove user groups in Central Java and understand the culture that mediates the relationship between each group and their traditional (baseline) stove technologies as a prerequisite before presuming to introduce an improved stove that can meet the market test of head to head competition with traditional stoves. Remember, in Indonesia most traditional stoves are made for less than $.50 (the one pot Keren clay stove) and retailed for $1. 



Figuring out how to build an improved stove for - say - $1.50 to $2.50 that performs all of the tasks currently performed by the baseline stove as well as reducing emissions and fuel use while improving the efficiency of the operator+stove+fuel+pot system is a very serious ‘high noon’ mountain to climb. Stove-slinging experts will have to be at the top of their game if they are going to hit enough bulls-eyes dawn by particular user groups to out perform traditional stoves on a level playing field. 


[RWL 5 : I think the concept of making money while cooking (to produce char) is too seldom even consid ered as a possibility [I gave an example im message below that looks compelling to me - and I rarely see this even on the table . But earning potential is taking place today - mai nly for climate reasons. Concentrating only on first cost is guaranteed to lose something.] 




How many quick-draw-McGraw's are out there in the 'bio-energy stove' network who are willing to test their marksmanship by shooting at the sometimes small and difficult to hit bulls eyes set by spectrum of different stove using groups and customers? It's the community of culturally and socially differentiated stove users who will and must decide whether a stove designer and fabricator have in fact created a stove product that is superior to the traditional stove products that presently dominate the market. The new stove has to convincingly outperform the traditional stove on its home turf. To achieve that market performance a brave new stove has to so convincingly outperform the old faithful traditional stove that conservative minded stove users willingly switch to the new stove product. 



Lastly, who is the boss when it comes to choosing the appropriate bull eyes for improved stove programs? We need to know up front whether the: 




    • stove buyers and users, 
    • stove producers, 
    • stove seller, 
    • stove funding agents (the World Bank and USAID and the carbon financiers), 
    • stove scientists, and 
    • government officials who make modern energy policies 


have equal say and authority over design, performance and cost of the improved stove while it is under development, or whether the commitment to democracy by the government and facilitating agencies is simply a charade and in reality – as George Orwell warned us in Animal Farm - some role players (remember Mr Pig?) are 'more equal than others' in the confusing world of Orwellian speak??? 

[RWL6. Everyone should follow the money.] 




What I am proposing is that representatives of all these stakeholders or constituencies make time to sit down together at the big table at the very beginning of R&D process to innovate, optimize, transfer/train, produce, distribute, and institutionalize improved stoves in Indonesia and in other biomass using countries to openly negotiate about what kinds of stove(s) make the most sense for particular user groups, producers, vendors, and regions. All these role players will be assisted to clarify and advocate for stove functions and performance attributes they want, feel strongly about, and are willing to buy, produce, invest in and/or support. These stakeholders will have to reason together, struggle and eventually compromise until they arrive at enough common ground to agree on a prescription for a specific improved stove design for a specific user group. Such a prescription will have to answer the following questions: 

    1. what will a first generation improved stove will look like (aesthetic appeal), 
    2. what functions must it perform?, 
    3. how it will be fabricated and out of what materials?, 
    4. where will it be produced and by whom?, 
    5. What is a fair price for the improved stove? 
    6. How much are different user groups willing and able to pay for an improved stove? 
    7. how will it be distributed and sold and with what mark ups?, 
    8. how many jobs will the improved stove create or eliminate?, 
    9. how long will it last?, 
    10. how much will it cost at the production site, the wholesale and retail price?, 
    11. what combustion and system efficiency does it need to achieve?, 
    12. how much fuel savings in comparison with the traditional stove is wanted?, 
    13. how will stove standards be established and maintained? 


[RWL7: Good list. I would add questions about the external it ies ( H ow soon before no forest? C an a stove program help take carbon out of the atmosphere - and wh at is the best way to pay for such a service? What is needed to subsidize a first cost so that a stove buyer can think of a purchase as a good (20% 30%?) money making investment? Are there any stoves that should be strongly discourage d (fossil fuel consumers)?, etc) 




Once all the above stakeholders have bought into particular prescription for a first generation improved stove, it becomes possible to tell the stove scientist, thermodynamic engineer, materials engineer, business man, banker and government policy maker what the target is that they have all agreed to. They become collectively responsible to each other for doing their level best to support and underwrite the development, testing, optimization and roll out of the first generation improved stove for a particular user group to which the stakeholders have mutually agreed. 



Ultimately we will probably have to work out the spiritual politics of the relationship between science and culture to get the 6 major stakeholders to come together and agree on a series of first generation improved stove. 





[RWL 8 : I suppose there could be a perfect or even a pretty good stove stove coming out of this. The danger I see is a prohibit ion on a superior outside product being kept out. I think this happened in India. I will feel comfortable with a process like the a bo ve only if all the true costs of stove operat ion are in the computations - and I mean health, global warming , farm - forest - biodiversity degradation, etc. I know nowhere wh ere all of these are on the table. Geres seemed to have ign ored all these, when they settled on a slightly improved more costly version of the traditional. jiko burning illegal char. ] 




If they cannot agree then I propose we resort to a stove technology court in which a panel of experts representing the interests of all these major stakeholders is formed and charged with assessing the improved stove prototypes by holding hearings from all role players who have something to say about what kind of biomass stoves and fuels will combine together to give the greatest benefit to the stove using and buying public, stove producers and stove sellers. There are representatives of 6 different stakeholders sitting on the technology court. It may be necessary to give the buyers/users and the producers and the vendors more than one vote when it comes time to decide between competing prototype stoves. 



These stove technology judges may have to witness the ‘mother of all shoot outs’ at the OK Corral between the ardent (fanatical) proponents of the different competing stove technologies and camps. But maybe not?: 

    • These stove technologies will have to give a guaranteed (unsubsidized) retail sales price over the next 12 months. 
    • The stoves will be operated by people from the target community who have been trained by the proponents of each type of stove technology. 
    • They will cook the same culturally valid meal and perform all the other functions which the user group expects its stoves to perform. 
    • After this ‘cooking shoot out’ the judges will review all the data on performance, including interviews with all the stove operators and follow up mixed focus groups composed of the operators of all the stoves. 
    • Finally there will need to be focus groups composed of onlookers from the target communities to get their votes and the reasons for favouring one stove more than other stoves. 


The panel of stove judges then retire, review all the evidence before them and decide which improved stove gets the highest score within the fit for purpose’ and appropriate assessment matrix. There is a reference to the idea of an environmental court – borrowed from idea of a science court that arrives at decisions about what is wort while to investigate - in a book written many years ago (1974) by Elting E Morrison, a historian of technology at MIT, No-how to Nowhere: the development of American technology. Morison was addressing the interface between S&T and culture where modern society is figuring out how to manage new technological powers, responsibilities and potentialities for disaster but there are as yet no agreed upon standards for managing these technologies or agreed upon principles to govern the distribution of responsibility for solving the environmental problems created the new technological powers. 

[RWL9: Cecil - I can't say I buy the idea of such a court. All such approaches depend on the knowledge and background of the individuals involved. The Royal Society tried th is with votes on var ious Geoengineering approaches - and think their votes wer e awful (no advocates for biochar involved in the vo ting). I would rather have a large number of panelists hearing from (and being able to question) very knowledgeable advocates . Maybe you are agreeing when you use the term " ardent (fanatical) proponents". But the key is having money to do some kick starting - th ose who supply the money can place some restrictions on price - but I hate to see the process thoug ht of as picking a single winner. Yes for a n R&D program like you described, but I see no reason everyone should be forced to acce pt a single pre-arr anged price (your first bullet) - when the life-times, efficiencies, potential income, etc can be very different at the same first cost. I can get closer to the idea you are proposing if life cycle cost (daily average?) re places the term "retail sales price" in the first bullet. Life cycle meaning all externalities are included. Any stove that is non-sustainable should not be allowed in the competition. I put fossil-fuel and charcoal-users in that category, unless proof can be assured on the sustainability (and legality) of the char source. ] 




My thought is that unless the stove community wises up it runs a serious of polarization, breakdown, and paralysis. It could quickly degenerate into a repeat of the Climategate fiasco with scientists behaving badly and the looming threat of a destructive Hobbesian war of all against all while the glaciers melt away to nothing or advance into the next ice age, depending on your ideological and scientific predilection. I think most participants on the bio-energy list will agree that as passionate as things sometimes get we do not want to descend into the non-science of 'stove-gate'. We need to hold the center and make sure that stove science, testing, and the customers in need of low cost high performance biomass stoves get the benefit of the best stoves that our collective genius and ingenuity can create! 



Morison recommended that we should radically decentralize the management of the application of western S&T to real world problems by creating a series of bio-regional environmental courts which would correspond to the major watersheds and river systems of each region, country and continent. These environmental courts would use the well established English common law tradition which gradually builds up precedents as judges and panels of wise, science literate men and women arrive at well thought out decisions about the best way to resolve particular conflicts between interested parties, long established standards and precedents when confronted by the opportunities and the potential threats posed by new science and forms of technology. English common law encourages a bottom up process – in contrast to the Dutch-Roman law which is universal, therefore centralized, and tends to empower government officials and dis-empower citizens. 







Over time, if there are learned, independent minded, and public service oriented men and women in charge of the regionalized stove technology courts in the extremely diverse regional and cultural environments of – for example - Indonesia, it is very likely over time that these regional technology courts or panels will begin to accumulate evidence based knowledge about biomass energy systems and technologies through: 



(i.) testimony by interested stakeholders and invited experts 

(ii.) studies of socio-economic and environmental impacts of different stoves and biomass fuels, 

(iii.) examination of the the social and economic costs and benefits of alternative stoves-fuel combinations , 

(iv.) the positives and negative consequences of different fuel supply chains, and 

(v.) the health and environmental problems caused by biomass burning under different household and urban settlement conditions. 



The judges will apply use this evidence of cause and effect to decide on the balance of the evidence presented what they agree will be the most reasonable, fair, and majority serving way for the biomass stove industry to evolve in a particular bio-region. The stove technology court becomes the focus for helping polarized interest groups transcend their differences, explore latent commonalities, and discover cooperative solutions to what seemed at the outset to be a completely non-negotiable conflict of science, approach and interest. The challenge is to define, measure, and discover how to guide competing combustion technologies, different fuel supply chains, and even different assessment methodologies toward complementary outcomes that will create new synergies that serve the greater good of the community. Competition between different biomass energy technologies, fuels, and systems can often be converted into complementarity (what Bucky Fuller liked to call synergy) by increasing the internal complexity and richness of the biomass energy economy. 
[RWL10: I like most of all this. My problem is failing to see an y group putting up the necessary funds. We can't wait around for such a scheme to develop. We are running out of time.] 




Initially, there are likely to be winners and losers, but as stove S&T matures and learns how to more perfectly serve the public good, all the citizens and residents of a bio-region will benefit eventually be helped to prosper collectively and to thrive as individuals and families. This constructive process takes place when the S&T adjudication procedures and the criteria used to decide what stoves perform best in a given part of the world, or for a specific user groups, ensure that the bull-eyes mandated by the citizenry and particular stove using groups are validated and strengthened. How do we get the stove scientists, stove producers, stove funding agents, and stove policy making government officials to all aim at the same bull-eyes? It should be obvious that different stove using and biomass consuming publics benefits from cooperative stove R&D. The costs of biomass energy will tend over time to decrease and the benefits increase as the stove science becomes more sophisticated, holistic, and powerful. If the major stakeholders and protagonists involved in the application of stove science and social science do not agree to cooperate and agree to collectively take aim at the same targets, what is the alternative? They will divide and conqueror themselves and end up taking potshots at one another. The village idiot will be put in charge of the stove technology assessment process which might well mean he will now busy himself painting circles on everybody's backside and wait to see who shoot first. It is in our interest as a network of potentially aristocratic and even virtuous men and women of S&T to choose the high road, and to avoid High Noon shoot outs at all costs. 


[RWL11: I am not doing anything commercially, but I fail to see much negative going on. Does the stove community represented by this list see a problem other than not enough R&D funding? (this last being mentioned recently by Paul Anderson). 

The nearest thing I see on the playing field to your above "court" is the GACC (PCIA having gone out of business.) Can you or anyone say wh ether GACC is filling some of the roles you are recommending (and I presume they have the needed funds now - tr ue?) Is there a group competitive with GACC? ] 




So, if you can’t take the heat I strongly recommend that you do the honourable thing and get out of kitchen and let all the other sweating stove scientists and producers get on with creating their second and third generation improved stoves. However, there is such a diversity of different kinds of stove using groups and communities in the developing world I am confident that as we go forward there will be more than enough commercial niches for each and every one of the major different types of biomass combustors. 


[RWL12: Not sure if your "you" above refers to me - or anyone specifically, but I am pretty sure that this list (thanks to Tom Miles and Andrew Heggie) is doing a pretty good job of providing the "courtroom" you seek - at least as well as one can do with zero public funding. I see a lot more cooperation here than one should expect in most of industry. The reason for pretty good cooperation is probably that the many stove problems are well recognized as being so serious - and the answers so difficult to implement in the absence of the needed funding (missing for health, climate, deforestation, income generation, etc benefits. 


We need to recognize that Intellectual Property - patents- need to be honored , when a n ind ividual may have put 6 figures ($) and years of eff ort into a nifty idea. Th e patent system is not going away soon - and copy -cats of patented stoves are already out there . Fortunat ely many ideas on this list are offered up in such a way that a later patent wouldn't be worth much. It would be in tere sting to know what might be coming down the road already. I hope there are many who have no inter est in courts or anything sim ilar. I wish them success, but also hope we can continue offering up free guidance and cr itiques when we can . There is a lot of good expertise on this list. (and at ETHOS, one day away) I repeat - we don't have much t ime. 


Again, Cecil, thanks for all the good thoughts above. Ron ) 







So be it! 



In service, 

Cecil Cook 






On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 12:24 PM, < rongretlarson at comcast.net > wrote: 




Cecil (with ccs): 


1. Thanks for bringing in an anthropologist's view on stove development. I find all of them below valuable. I will probably follow up with some more questions after thinking a bit more first on the 65 pp report you have recommended in your final sentence (and reading more of their literature. You said: 


"It may also useful to review the Genes led Global Stove Program < http://www.geres.eu/en/geres-cambodia > which lays out a 5 year strategy to share the lessons learned by the Cambodian Improved Cookstove Program with other national stove initiatives in SEAsia and French speaking West Africa" 

2. This report was new to me, and does seem well done. It wouldn't surprise me that the GERES effort might have been behind the choice of Cambodia for the March GACC meeting. The report is directly downloadable at: 
http://www.geres.eu/images/stories/publis/publi-nls-en.pdf 

3. As I am very concerned about the huge waste that accompanies most char production, I was disappointed in finding this (emphasis added) at the top of p 27, near the end of the first section: 
"Again in Cambodia, GERES is also working in 
partership with a forest community in Takeo on 
charcoal manufacture. Officially illegal , this is an 
intensive practice on the fringes of natural forests 
and largely responsible for their degradation.:" 

I can support their ignoring the legality issue if the resulting char were really produced with efficient use of the pyrolysis gases. My guess is it was probably only a little better and couldn't compete with the costs associated with illegal production. Do you or anyone know if most Cambodian char is still mostly illegal? How do anthropologists suggest handling this sort of issue? 

4. On p 50, we read (emphasis added): 
"Biomass is generally considered to be a renewable 
fuel. When it is burnt any CO2 released is 
assumed to be reabsorbed through re-growth of 
biomass. If biomass is not re-grown, then the 
emissions from biomass can be considered to be 
a non-renewable fuel. Therefore, cooking stove 
projects can only generate emission reductions 
where it can be shown that the biomass used is 
non-renewable ." 

This final, quite lengthy section is valuable in explaining the importance of carbon credits to advancing cleaner stoves in GERES (and my) opinion. But they have to accept less than a reasonable amount for this asinine rationale here. I would appreciate hearing if any changes in this arena have been possible in the three years since this report came out. Is this problem possibly solved with char-making stoves? 

5. Earlier there is a good bit of interesting survey data of all types. The author apologizes for it being a hurried four-month survey. I wonder if there has been another more recent version? 

6. I am not very interested in most of the numerical material as I am so down on charcoal-using stoves, even when the source is legal. But on p38, we read some data that is surprisingly hard to obtain (2009 prices, when 1 dollar was worth on the order of 4250 riels) 
"The average charcoal price is 970 riel (US$0.23) per 
kilo, while the average firewood price is 300 riel (US$0.07) per kilo. " 

a. Suppose we have a char-making stove and we want to sell a kilo of char (worth 23 cents) that we have made on our char-making stove. 

b. Assuming 50% of the wood initially is carbon and we can get 25% of the initial wood (50% of the initial carbon) out as char, then we need to buy 4 kilos of wood (28 cents) to produce the 1 kilo of char worth 23 cents. Sounds like a loss of 5 cents. Bummer. 

c. But we got a fair amount of cooking out of that 28 cent investment. We started out with about 4 kg * 18 MJ/kg = 72 MJ, and ended up with 1 kg * 30 MJ /kg in char - a difference of 42 MJ. 

d. If we had done the same amount of cooking with the same efficiency with char, we would have needed to start with 42 MJ/(30 MJ/kg) = 1.4 kg of char, worth 1.4 * 23 = 32.2 cents. 

e. So the "loss" (expense) on the char-using side is 32.2 cents while on the wood side was 5 cents - a difference of 27.2 cents in favor of the wood user. This number is very close to the initial wood expenses of 28 cents - so the wood user essentially cooked for free. The char-user spent (lost) 42 cents for the same cooking service 

f. Since char-making stoves are reported by EPA (and others) to be the highest efficiency reported (in part because the power level is controllable), maybe the economic argument is even more in favor of the char-maker. 

g. But there is a fair amount in this report on time savings for the report's improved stove (called an "nls"), we should add that in. I bet the charcoal-maker saves time over the nls. 

h. So what might the payback be? Assume that the family size is such that 1 kg of char is produced per day (the argument above was for a one time sale of 1 kg, not per day), and that this char-maker sold for $23 (4-5 times more than the nls). The simple payback would be $23/($0.23/day) = 100 days. Probably much less when the value of time saved is include. 

i. My question to Cecil (or anyone else free to chime also of course)l, as a stove-anthropologist is whether this might be worth a rural or urban home-maker looking more closely at the char-making stove option (say including the stove-life guarantee, etc) - in your survey experience in countries like Cambodia? The issue is discount rate. 

j. I am not as interested in this answer - but we should also compare to just an ordinary wood-burning stove equivalent. The amount of wood to supply just the same daily 42 MJ of cooking would be 42 MJ / (18 MJ/kg) = 2.33 kg, worth 2.33 kg*$.07/kg = 16.3 cents. Not as good as 23 cents per day, and maybe the user would stop here if the char-maker had a lot of other problems (such as being batch mode). But maybe the time savings and cleaner kitchen with a char-making stove will make the difference in favor of making char - despite having to spend time to deal with a char-buyer. 

k. Oh yes- we can't forget the value of the appreciably larger carbon credits that could go with biochar and presumably would be supported by Geres. None of the above was based on credits. I need to read more.. 

Ron 




From: "Cecil Cook" < cec1863 at gmail.com > 
To: "Discussion of biomass cooking stoves" < stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org >, "Paul Anderson" < psanders at ilstu.edu > 
Cc: "Iwan BASKORO" < i.baskoro at geres.eu >, "Hugh McLaughlin" < wastemin1 at verizon.net >, "Bob Fairchild" < solarbobky at yahoo.com > 
Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2013 2:49:51 AM 
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Example of missed opportunities was Re: is this new? 







Dear Pual, Kevin, Crispin, Marc, and kindred stovers, 



I am a much backslid applied anthropologists who took a 30 year side trip into appropriate technology in South Africa at the instigation of Crispin. Now a days Crispin is still misleading me by asking me to assist him and the World Bank design, test, produce, and market ever more perfect low cost biomass stoves in places like Ulaanbataar in Mongolia, Yogyakarta in Java, and most recently Battambang in Cambodia. With fiendish friends like Crispin, who needs enemies? 



Kevin's comic stories about the idiot savant who is very good at drawing circles around bullet holes is unfortunately a hilarious metaphor for the multiple problems and predicaments that stove scientists, inventors and enthusiasts typically create for themselves when they (we?) try to innovate ever more perfect biomass burning stoves for imagined and therefore voiceless stove customers. 



I recently discovered there is a significant market in Central Java for big portable charcoal stoves so that neighbours can come together to prepare food in a sequence of 7 memorials for deceased family members (the last feast or party comes 1000 days after a loved one dies). As an act of solidarity, families, neighbours and friends get together outside in courtyards and alleyways to cook big pots of food that is eaten by the living in honour of the recently deceased. I have not observed one of these memorial services but many families in the city informed me they have a big charcoal or wood burning stove that mainly gets used for these parties for the dead and for weddings, or by small food vendors who prepare food for sale to passersby or also by caterers and in the kitchens of restaurants ... otherwise these big stoves are simply stored in a corner. Families estimated they use their big stoves about one to two times a month. 



It would theoretically be possible to figure out what percentage of the biomass fuels entering the urban economy of Yogyakarta city in Central Java are devoted to staying on good terms of with spirits of the deceased and the in-laws. Who but an inquisitive anthropologist would bother to isolate large portable biomass stoves used for these important social ceremonies to memorialize the dead and celebrate weddings as a potential market segment of the stove buying public that needs be studied, understood, and perhaps is important enough to merit the design of a biomass stove that meets their socio-economic needs. 



In the case of cooking for the dead and the in-laws, we are talking here about millions of biomass stoves that are mostly, but not exclusively, used for big social ceremonies in Indonesia where there are perhaps a 100 million biomass stoves in used with a replacement rate of perhaps 100 million stoves a year at a cost of $1 to $2 each which is the going market value of a traditional artisan made stove). The traditional stove economy of Indonesia is vast and highly differentiated between a number of different - somewhat specialized - market segments with different needs, interests and amounts of money to spend. 



The informal approach that Crispin and I have used for many years is for us to spend a day or two together with a typical low income family and go through a cooking day together. While Crispin is focused on stoves, the pots used, the sequencing of tasks and cooking cycles, I take time to walk around the village or neighbourhood meeting the fuel sellers and stove vendors in the nearby markets to get an idea about the stove and fuel supply chains, the mark ups added to the retail value by the time a stove or 1 kg bag or charcoal or a small bundle of wood is purchased by a low income household. One thing we have discovered in Malawi, DRC, Mozambique, Zambia, and now Mongolia, Indonesia, and Cambodia that the bottom 1/3 to 1/2 of these households survive on tiny daily cash flows of less than a couple of dollars. The difference in cost between a $1 to $2 stove and a $4 stove is huge. Think about your response to a doubling of the cost of any big ticket durable consumer item that you have come to depend on in your daily life like a car, or refrigerator or a gas stove! 



What normally happens when Crispin and I come face to face with the social and economic reality of an urban or village household is that Crispin's inventive mind is stimulated when it confronts the 'otherness' of a particular culture of stove-fuel use which includes the traditional ways that people, both men and women, operate their stoves and combine different types of biomass fuels to get the performances they want from their stoves. They know a lot about economizing scarce fuels when they are running out of money and/or fuel. He can’t help himself. Crispin has an uncontrollable urge to innovate improvement in stove products as he encounters them in their cultural contexts. This same process continues when Crispin sits down with a traditional stove maker and comes to terms with his knowhow and his or her technical, resource and financial constraints. It is human, engaged, and face to face! 



This is beginning of a real, culturally contextualized AT design process: Crispin as stove scientist is challenged by me and indigenous stove users and stove makers to reconfigure himself into a practical engineer who accepts responsibility for converting his universal knowledge about combustion, heat transfer, and biomass energy into forms that will be understood and used by a semi-literate and pre-scientific artisan stove maker. The blessing of AT is the democratization of the power and the benefits of an increasingly planetary system of science and technology that comes about when we succeed in translating this S&T into de-mystified forms that can be understood and creatively applied by artisan stove makers, who know how to produce a very cheap $1 to $2 stove (which the stove scientist does not know how to pull off!). But, the indigenous stove producer does not know much about PM, the role of primary and secondary air flows and finding the right balance, how to get the right amount of Excess Air flowing through a stove, and how to maximize heat transfer between the fire and the pot. Crispin needs to learn from the indigenous stove makers how he earns a living making his traditional stove for 1 to 2 dollars and in that way dominates the stove market and how the household stove users operates a traditional stove to get the performance wanted out of it. It is Crispin’s and mostly my job as a stove anthropologist to learn enough so that we can read and begin operating within the cultural (ethno-science), behavioural and organizational system of traditional stoves and therefore figure out where the best places are to begin introducing changes into the traditional operator-stove-stove maker/vendor-fuel producer economy. 



I agree totally with you that idiot stove scientists are drawing circles around their shots into the dark unknown of the traditional operator-stove-fuel economy. If we continue to privilege the stove scientist and the imagined brave new stoves he hopes will liberate humanity from pollution (PM), asthma, and the daily grind of gathering firewood, and persist in using his western style 'ethno-science' to test the performance of ‘improved’ stoves to identify the best performers by his stove science centered criteria we will simply continue to fail in our mission to bring the multiple benefits of science to the villagers and urban survivalists struggling at the Bottom of the Pryamid This approach is hopelessly techno-centric and technocratic in perspective and ultimately doomed to failure because justifies the imposition by the World Bank and USAID and well meaning national government of improved stoves costing $10 to $30 each on villagers and urban residents who survive on less than $1 per person per day. 

We can do better, much better than this, and I believe that Crispin and I have done and continue to do better by helping stove scientists enter the mind and heart of indigenous stove users and producers and discovering how to practically empower stove producers with a fundamental grasp of the applied science of high performance stoves. When that happens, indigenous stove producers and vendors gain the practical knowledge they need to produce a much improved $3 or $4 stove. A stove that costs two times more than the industry standard is still within the reach of most stove buyers the world over. A Chinese manufactured StoveTec rocket stove that sells for about $30 here in South Africa is ridiculously out of reach to local users of biomass stove, including the three stoned fire. 



The last point I will share before I totter and totally fall off my soap box is that we must develop our stove performance testing protocols around the culturally and economically appropriate performance criteria that presently guide the behaviours and economic choices of stove buyers in particular market segments. It is also necessity to penetrate the cultural, social and economic worlds of the stove makers and stove vendors to full understand why the existing stove-fuel economy is dominated by $1 to $2 stoves and how these value chains operate. The traditional operator-stove-fuel system must be allowed to sit in judgement of the mad hatter stove designer who are beginning to control of hundreds of millions of development funds for the improvement of traditional stoves... not the reverse. 



When it is possible for stove scientists - who passionately debate on the bio-energy discussion list - to innovate Improved Stoves with superior emissions and system efficiency performances that only cost $3 to $4 biomass and that continue to meet all of the critical socio-cultural performance requirements of the existing traditional stove then I will be doing back flips with Father William to celebrate their accomplishments. As an engineer shy anthropologist who has waited patiently off stage for the stove scientists and hardware experts to recognize the short coming of the technology centered approach, I am eager to participate with them to create an inclusive multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach to the in situ design and development of improved stoves. 



I am eager to take my hat off and salute stove scientists and engineers for rededicating themselves to the transcendental objectives of humanity serving appropriate science and technology: what did Fuller call it? Ah yes, I remember, it is his more-for-less principle which enables a mature technology to become ever more spirit like. Bucky called it the 'ephemeralization' of science whereby a mature technology requires less and less energy and material to perform a given function like computing, communicating, or cooking. 



May I recommend that stovers take a good look at what Geres/Cambodia has accomplished to date over 16 years with a stove improvement strategy that concentrates on gradually improving the designs, materials, and production methods of the producers and distributional methods of the vendors of traditional stoves, and not on the primary stove buyer, the stove technology itself, and certainly not the stove scientists. 



Here is the url < http://www.geres.eu/en/studies/122-publi-etude-nls > for an important review of the process that Geres went through in its capacity as a facilitator of baseline research and institution builder that transformed the traditional Lao bucket charcoal burning stove into the 'new Lao' improved cookstove which is today produced and distributed by 35 small stove making enterprises who between them produce and sell more than 25 000 NL stoves every month. There are many useful lessons in this in situ stove development strategy which the Geres team systematically followed in Cambodia. They decided to maximize the use of the the: 

1. traditional stove technologies, 

2. stove operating skills and knowledge base of particular groups of stove users, 

3. indigenous know how and business of producers of the traditional Lao stove, and 

4. existing network of wholesalers and retailers of stoves. 



They have also minimized any disruption to this pre-existing traditional system of producing, distributing and selling the Lao bucket charcoal stove by incrementally improving the design, materials, production, training, and distribution of the various 'traditional' role players in the stove+operator+producer+vendor+fuel supply chain economy. 



I think we stove scientists, social science facilitators, funding agents, and development policy makers, stove producers, etc. need to carefully assess the relevance of the Geres Improved Cookstove Program for how to incrementally develop improved 'traditional' stoves that are able to compete with $1 to $2 stoves that dominate the stove markets of most developing countries. 



It may also useful to review the Genes led Global Stove Program < http://www.geres.eu/en/geres-cambodia > which lays out a 5 year strategy to share the lessons learned by the Cambodian Improved Cookstove Program with other national stove initiatives in SEAsia and French speaking West Africa. 



In service, 

Cecil Cook 

TechnoShare 

South Africa 

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 2:41 AM, Kevin < kchisholm at ca.inter.net > wrote: 

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Dear Paul 



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