[Stoves] Business sickness (Crispin)
Paul Anderson
psanders at ilstu.edu
Mon Aug 1 09:28:33 CDT 2016
A.D.,
Exactly so!!!! What could be some plans of action to accomplish
this?? Who are the advocates of such assistance?
Paul
Doc / Dr TLUD / Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email: psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype: paultlud Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website: www.drtlud.com
On 8/1/2016 2:28 AM, Anand Karve wrote:
> Indian villagers generally use fuel generated in their own farms
> (e.g.stalks of cotton and pigeonpea, dung cakes). Government of India
> subsidizes modern energy sources such as LPG and electricity, which
> are used in the cities. As the fuel used by villagers is not
> subsidized, the government should at least subsidize improved stoves.
> At least in India, the administrative infrastructure exists for
> supervising such a programme.
> Yours
> A.D.Karve
>
> ***
> Dr. A.D. Karve
>
> Chairman, Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd (www.samuchit.com
> <http://www.samuchit.com>)
>
> Trustee & Founder President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)
>
> On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 11:53 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com
> <mailto:miata98 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Nikhil Desai again, on "performance metrics" and subsidies, in
> response to Crispin Pemberton-Pigott.
>
> ------------
> I partly agree with Crispin, “There is always the possibility that
> an assumption is blocking the way. In this case, that a high
> performance stove (however defined) has to cost a lot more..”
>
> The primary error is in holding that fuel consumption and emission
> rates are performance metrics. Says who? The bean-counters of
> petajoules, trees and sequestered carbon, DALYs (all of which are
> cooked numbers)? Unfortunately, we have created energy poverty
> pundits with galling ignorance and misinformation. Treating stoves
> and lungs as mere oxidation machines is mockery of the poor.
> Subsidizing government stove experts to control biomass stove
> designs and subsidies hasn't done a thing for India, as this
> article last year shows so vividlyUp in Smoke
> <http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/smoke-India-perfect-cookstove> (Caravan,
> April 2015).
>
> What matters is creating an aspirational product, for today’s
> children and youth, not grandmas. “High cost” if a barrier, can be
> dealt with by subsidies. The metric of success, in my mind, is
> whether a user buys a second product or a replacement product with
> lower or no subsidies.
>
> ---
> There are three main reasons subsidies have not received much
> attention for solid fuel stoves (compared to LPG and electricity):
> i) Not enough confidence in the benefits (as perceived by the
> poor, including convenience); ii) Difficult or irrational
> technical standards that are unenforceable (I can debate this some
> other time); iii) Perception of un-competitive behaviour and
> potential for corruption or stagnation; iv) unclear demand
> potential and success metrics; and v) potentially high
> administrative costs. The last can get a nightmare with the type
> of Monitoring and Evaluation some donors have been forcing on
> stove programs; poor governments don’t have the luxury of fancy,
> non-reproducible experiments on the poor just for keeping foreign
> PhDs employed. (Example - the infamous MIT gang of
> Hanna-Duflo-Greenstone.)
>
> This doesn't apply for all means of subsidies, but the Indian
> government's stove programs have suffered from one or more of
> these factors over the decades. Giving consumer the choice may
> get around some of these problems, provided i) and ii) are solved
> (as they are for LPG; pico-PV is getting there.) For LPG, PNG and
> grid electricity - heavily used for some 1/3 to 1/2 of cooking
> energy demand in India, and other sources of emissions ignored by
> the GBD gang - problems iv) and v) are also solved, enough that
> few people bother about iii). A successful subsidy program creates
> its vested interests; for biomass stoves, looks like the only
> vested interest for government subsidies are MNRE and its
> contractors.
>
> Some other stoves are probably easier to subsidize – solar cookers
> (no worries about fuel quality and use patterns), biogas small and
> large, even gelfuel and stoves. My crude impression is,
> governments are happy to leave bilateral donors and private
> charities the field of “improved biomass stoves”. None has yet
> been found worthy of a long-term subsidy program; however, I feel
> other means of support ought to be extended to biomass stove
> designers, testers, manufacturers. Governments are also major
> buyers of fuel and stoves, but I rarely hear much on selling
> stoves to them. (One exception I know of – Albert Butare in
> Rwanda; I don’t know what came of the initiative.)
>
> I suspect mid-size coal stoves are easier to certify and support –
> when fuel quality is fairly consistent, and utilization rates are
> high (cooking and heating). Their users tend to be not so poor as
> those who rely on twig collection and three-stone fires. Research
> on coals and their combustion is extensive; coal can be burnt
> “clean enough” for boiler use.
>
> Miracle biomass stoves that can take any fuel, so appeal to
> household cooks to do a complete permanent switchover for any use
> .. Wake me up in 15 years. (Some years ago, I drafted a proposal
> that opened the door for India's Advanced Biomass Stoves program
> that went up in smoke.)
>
> Crispin again, "Cecil's question is which stove will find the
> greatest acceptance in the least time? Make and maintain it
> yourself forever, or wait for a subsidy? That is a rational
> choice. If someone gives you as stove and you sell it then make
> your own, you have benefitted from the stove programme. I know
> where there are thousands of examples of that. Maybe tens of
> thousands. It depends on the offer."
>
> If you mean tens of thousands of stoves, not worth the bother. If
> tens of thousands of projects with millions of stoves, worth
> building a record. Do GACC or giz or anybody have such records? I
> hadn't seen any as of five years ago. What do you think has been
> spent on woodstoves programs in poor countries to date by foreign
> governments, multilateral agencies, and charities - some $400
> million in 40 years? How much of that on subsidies and how much on
> research, M&E, and learning lessons without really?
>
>
>
> Nikhil
> ---------
> (India +91) 909 995
> 2080----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2016 15:52:12 -0400
> From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com
> <mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>>
> To: "'Discussion of biomass cooking stoves'"
> <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> <mailto:stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>>
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Fwd: business sickness
> Message-ID: <COL401-EAS369ED0D936E79C2E6CF59BEB1270 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Dear Bob L
>
>
> I think there is a choice or two that was not covered in your list
> of the options (or rather, Radha?s options if that was the source).
>
> "a billions women can't afford the stove they need. We have three
> choices.
> we can leave them out
> we can sell them a stove they can afford that they will abandon
> we can subsidize their purchase.
>
> we choose to subsidise their purchase."
>
> One of the things Cecil Cook keeps saying is that the designers
> have to realise that there is an upper limit to what people are
> willing to spend on a stove. That is true, and the amount can be
> ascertained, but there is more complication to it.
>
> A stove that only does a certain range of things (addressing
> Nikhil?s question about ?performance?) has a certain perceived
> value. Another device that does pretty much the same thing will be
> assigned pretty much the same perceived value.
>
> Three options: change the perceived value (advertising), or bring
> more to the table (like adding electricity), or increase the
> performance without increasing the cost.
>
> There is always the possibility that an assumption is blocking the
> way. In this case, that a high performance stove (however defined)
> has to cost a lot more. This is common cause in the donor
> community, with some but not a heck of a lot of justification.
> Using the same materials and creating a new configuration can
> deliver more benefit without increasing the amount of material of
> the cost. Some designs would benefit from being mass produced,
> some from mass parts production and local assembly. Some designs
> require a high local skill level and it is difficult to transfer
> such skills.
>
> My main point is that delivering far better stoves for the same
> cost is what engineers and in fact universities are good at doing.
> More function for less cost. I mention universities because while
> they are not major sources of invention, they are very good at
> optimising the application of new ideas. Engineers are supposed to
> optimise the use of materials and cost to deliver a given
> performance target with a required margin of safety as a matter of
> course.
>
> Practical Action made a major effort in Darfur to improve the
> performance of the local mud stoves that were in common use. They
> achieved a consistent 50% fuel saving across the board without an
> increase in cost. Such an achievement is usually accompanied by a
> reduction in emissions of smoke and CO because they have to be
> burned to get that magnitude of performance increase. Not always,
> but almost all the time. So we can demonstrate that the goal of
> improvement can be achieved without having to spend more.
>
> We can also spend more and get an improvement, no problem. Cecil?s
> question is which stove will find the greatest acceptance in the
> least time? Make and maintain it yourself forever, or wait for a
> subsidy? That is a rational choice. If someone gives you as stove
> and you sell it then make your own, you have benefitted from the
> stove programme. I know where there are thousands of examples of
> that. Maybe tens of thousands. It depends on the offer.
>
> Bob, it sounds like you have a winner of an approach, and it is
> quite likely the government won?t kick in anything. Don?t give up,
> but unless there is some net beneficial offer it will lag behind
> in the decision tree. Is it not possible for the communities to
> kick something in? I live in Mennonite country and they frequently
> do things like that. Local self-upliftment. If it is really
> valuable and appreciated, to what extent can a community organise
> things for its own benefit? I have seen amazing things happen.
>
> Kukaa vizuri
>
> Crispin
>
> bob lange 508 735 9176 <tel:508%20735%209176>
> the Maasai Stoves and Solar Project.
> the ICSEE
>
>
>
>
>
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