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

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Cecil And Ron

Thanks to both for your contributions.

CEC>> 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, [Know?]-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 this with votes on various Geoengineering approaches - and  think their votes were awful  (no advocates for biochar involved in the voting).   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 -  those who supply the money can place some restrictions on price - but I hate to see the process thought of as picking a single winner.  Yes for an R&D program like you described, but I see no reason everyone should be forced to accept a single pre-arranged 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?) replaces 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.] 

The role of the National regulating authority in the enforcement of national regulations performs pretty much the same role as is described above as a technology court.

The problem with all such efforts has been that political actors take control of the adjudication process and bend it to suit some or other agenda that is not in the public interest, though always claiming to be doing exactly that. The ILO process (distinct from the ISO process) for creating regulations for products sold to the public is followed in most countries. There are two levels of regulation development under the eye of the national standards body. These are usually called the Technical Committee where the goals of the standard are created and moderated, and the Working Group which writes the text, sets the numerical goals + metrics and sets the tests that will be used to determine the pass/fail rating for a product. 

The membership of the Working Group is open to anyone interested who does not get kicked out (and I have seen that come very close to happening). Typically vested interests are represented: manufacturers, consumer organisations, safety interests, competing technology representatives (who sometimes try to screw up the process so their products receive favourable treatment). There is considerable to-and-fro between manufacturers who want to get their product made compulsory and their opposition’s banned. In the US this often revolves around the concept of ‘foreseeable misuse’ and the reality in the US is that standards are driven not by technology and progress, but by the liability insurance industry industry. In other countries there are such considerations, but they do not drive the whole process.

In short, a stove court is a place where one would expect the most appropriate technology to be given the highest marks. In practice this does not happen even when that ‘court’ exists. There are simply too many interests at play from national hegemonic ones to competition between energy carriers to naked private advantage sought for personal gain.

Writing a standard for stoves (which means including the test methods to be used) has to be done with a view to what might be invented in future. The danger of ‘pronouncing’ on a particular technology is that the rating is misused. Further, and this is an issue for enforcers of national regulators, producers make a product that passes and rates as OK but change the product later but still attach the rating paper from the ‘good version’. This happened in Mongolia with the stoves being subsidised to the ger dwellers. A rating for a particular product is being used to sell ‘similar’ products from other sources. In short, the decisions of a technology court can be misused and often are, actually.

>>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.  

All the elements of a Working Group consultation described above are in evidence within the informal consultation taking place in the stove community. It used to be a much more sharing-of-information and look-what-I-invented group. Now there is so much money flowing the emergence of narrow interest for gain is truly taking over. Very few of us are still giving away design and commercial advice.  The increasing availability of monetary subsidies has increased the prospect of plunder.

All this points to the critical issue of test methods. If a test favours (through error and systematic bias) certain stove types, then makers and promoters of those stoves will prefer all testing or the grading system to be the one that rates their products highest. Finding a court-like balance requires a Solomon-like sense of justice while remaining technology or company-neutral. 

Because there is an expectation of that being ‘difficult’ the answer is the ILO process where the individual prejudices (and ‘games’) are restricted to the Working Group. The membership of the Technical Committee is by organisations only. This tends to minimize the problem, even if it does not eliminate it. It is not so much a paralysis, but more like a bias. Things get decided, the problem is who gets to do the deciding and who gets ignored.

With reference to the ISO process, there is a clearly laid out set of rules for the nations of the world who are members to have the same discussion about stove standards and methods for assessing them. That process has not yet started. The IWA is an interim agreement that many signed for reasons other than that they agreed with its content. The real discussion has not yet started. You can’t possibly draft a meaningful set of rules and targets that represents the opinions of the whole world in a couple of days.

Like an ILO process Technical Committee, the ISO process is much harder to pre-load with bias and hegemony. The only members in the discussion are national representatives of Standards organisations so the presence of completely biased individual companies (for example) seeking permanent advantage through legislation is pretty much removed. Obviously the result is not perfect, but at least (when the process is used properly) the result is something that is fair and balanced and (in my view the most important) allows for future innovation without being blocked.

A good example of these principles in action is the compulsory paraffin stove standards implemented (by law) in South Africa recently. These were draft with such good intentions and such care to anticipate future innovation that nearly every imaginable stove can be accommodated. Because of a very difficult decision about whether or not the filling of the fuel burner by an inverted reservoir constituted ‘refuelling which lit’ (which is not allowed) the relevant paragraph was not made compulsory. If it had been, an existing product would have been banned. It is allowed not by complying with the exact wording, but by complying with the intention not to create dangers by refuelling a stove when it is running.

This is very different from most old South African pre-1994 standards which were quite prescriptive in nature (describing a product the regulator was happy with) allowing for no innovation at all. The test methods are sometimes used to favour certain products (sometimes allowing only one). That is the sort of fiddling that needs to be prevented for the stoves court function to succeed, however it is ultimate accomplished.

It is my hope that the days getting a toe in the door and eventually forcing through a taking over the whole house are gone. It is also important that the stove world does not go down the road of “liability for the consequences of foreseeable misuse” which is where you sue the restaurant for $4m because you spilled hot coffee on yourself. People mis-use stoves and die. That is the plain truth. Safety matters. But we can’t allow fanaticism on one front to dictate the whole of life.

It is through even-handed consultation on the widest platform that the most progress will be made.

Regards

Crispin

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