[Stoves] Biomass, coal and LPG as cooking fuels ... was Re: report with disappointing results from cleaner cookstoves

Tue Dec 13 17:54:22 CST 2016

Hi Crispin

1. I applaud your efforts to burn coal more efficiently but I think expansion is a disaster. A main problem with coal is the sustainability of supply and extraction. At current rates of consumption in China for example, they have about 50 years of coal supply and they are destroying their aquifiers through extracting it and urban air quality by burning it. I mean I realize there are areas of China where biomass is limited and coal is essential. It should be burned efficiently but it has low sustainability as a fuel source.  I think rural Malawi could look at doing what some villages in India are doing and that is growing pigeon peas for food and fuel. Its cultural though the Indians have a long history of eating pigeon peas. We had nice results with pigeon peas as a fuel source in Gambia but they didn't like the taste compared to their delicious large seed cowpeas. Pigeon peas are great as a drought tolerant crop that is a good N fixer. Pigeon pea intercrops well with maize and can be planted with animal draft power. I think there is a big scope for going to food plus fuel crops like cashew, mango, moringa. pigeon pea etc in many developing countries and learn to prune branches more intensively. Fuel alone tree planting is not as attractive for communities as food plus fuel from my experiences in West Africa. I think we need to focus more on food plus fuel agroforestry systems as an important component of sustainable rural cooking systems. 

2. And seeing that Crispin raised the issue of comfort.....  If any of you folks out there are seeking real comfort. I suggest you get a  job at the GACC secretariat as it looks like that's where the good times roll.
>From the GACC website: During Phase 1, the Alliance and our global partners have driven $62 million in grant funding for Secretariat activities and another $50 million in investment for the sector at large. 
Now how many of you think that is a fair balance.????.. the sector at large.. I guess they means the masses of poor people. I guess you wouldn't want to write masses of poor people get less than half of the money that went to the GACC secretariat. Should we replay the Leonard Cohen tune...

I am getting real curious what the GACC CEO is making, Can anyone inform us that knows? There must be some rights the 1600 partners have to know how the organization is run. 

regards

Roger

--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 12/13/16, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [Stoves] Biomass, coal and LPG as cooking fuels ... was Re: report with disappointing results from cleaner cookstoves
 To: "Stoves" <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
 Received: Tuesday, December 13, 2016, 5:21 PM

 Dear Paul

 Very sensible approach. 

 Suppose you are concerned about the total CO2 emissions from
 coal combustion. What is the most effective way to burn it
 for the most benefit? Burn it cleanly in the hone being
 heated, or where the food is cooked. 

 It used to be true that only large scale combustion could be
 considered clean. No longer.

 If you feel that poor people, who live their whole lives in
 energy poverty,so it is  ought to 'do their share'
 by reducing their ‎CO2 emissions, what better way than to
 reduce their coal consumption by 50%.  Makes sense, right?
  If there are good ideological
  reasons for asking the poor to 'do with less' then
 we should at least provide some offsetting benefit in the
 form of a more comfortable life, that is how I see
 it. 

 ‎At the moment this is pretty easy to do
 because the traditional stoves are so terribly inefficient,
 far less than you would guess.

 Testing the common stoves in Tajikistan I
 found they are less than 20% efficient at low power - as
 space heating. Cooking efficiency is a 1/4 of that or
 less!

 So...if we really want to help people who
 'need it' let's cut their fuel purchases in half
 not by appealing to ‎a fuzzy goal about CO2 but by
 teaching them to build stoves that use half
  as much fuel, that can burn for 6-24 hours without
 attention instead of 2-3, and which greatly reduce emissions
 of non-inherent substances, especially
 PIC's. 

 Such an approach would clean up the air in
 the cities, the valleys and the neighbourhoods.

 Regards 

 Crispin 

 ‎

 Stovers,   (Subject thread changed because the topic
 has shifted completely)

 We are stovers.   We are on the Stoves listserv that has a
 STRONG focus on biomass fuels.  And we will stay that
 way.

 But we are not to be ignorant about other fuels.   We know
 that there are massive efforts (and investments) for LPG
 stoves, especially in India, but talked about in many
 places.   About LPG, I only complain that LPG is sucking
 up so much of the funding and
  advocacy support.   Just give equal resources to the
 CLEAN biomass-burning stoves.  Not likely to happen, so LPG
 fossil fuel gets burned, increasing the CO2 in the
 atmosphere.  And LPG will NEVER reach the hundreds of
 millions of households that need better
  stoves.  Cherry pick the more affluent of the poor.  
 But LPG is not a realistic answer when it comes to serving
 the masses of people in poverty.

 But we tollerate LPG.  If interested, sign up for the LPG
 stove webinar that is this Thursday at 9 AM Central Standard
 Time.

 But hey, what about coal?   It certainly gets bad-mouthed
 on the Stoves listserv.   Dirty coal.  Blah Blah Blah.

 Well, if we can "tollerate" LPG as a fossil fuel
 that gives clean cookstoves to needy people, we should also
 "tollerate or even accept" that CLEAN-BURNING of
 COAL is just as good (or equally bad but allowed) as LPG. 

 IF    or   WHEN   or    NOW THAT      the Model
 4 coal gasifiers are measureably shown to be quite clean
 burning, it is time for the Stovers to acknowledge them and
 to actually embrace the coal gasifiers WHERE
 APPROPRIATE.   Coal and modern coal-burning gasifier
  stoves are not a strong candidate solution for cookstoves
 in the humid tropics where biomass is sufficiently
 present.   And coal is certainly not present
 everywhere.

 But where coal is available and where biomass is scarce
 (such as Malawi) or where it is cold and stoves run almost
 continually for 5 to 8 months, these new improved coal
 burners COULD have a major role.   They should have a
 chance to be proven.   Time for some
  resources to be put into usage of that technology.

 The Stoves Listserv has had major discussions about alcohol
 stoves and now LPG and even some (not much) about solar and
 retained heat cookers.  We are not about ONLY biomass
 stoves.   We are about stoves for impoverished people, for
 whom biomass is by far the
  most important fuel.  But we are NOT against coal when
 burned correctly and in appropriate situations.  (If we
 were against coal and fossil fuels, we would abandon most of
 the USA for 3 to 5 months every winter because our homes
 would be frozen shut.)

 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 12/13/2016 1:52
 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:

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 Dear Jock

 Would you agree that the
 ‘same-old-same-old’ means the same stoves that we have
 been punting for years, which are either rejected as not
 cooking properly, or too expensive?

 Perhaps we should concentrate on
 finding disruptive technologies that leap past old
 hurdles.

 Two come time mind that are
 presently being rolled out on a small scale: the TLUD’s
 making charcoal for money that Sujatha is making, and the
 Model 4 coal gasifiers. Both
  are making a lie out of many assumptions that have driven
 many of the decisions (and ‘truths’) taken in the past
 5-10 years.

 The first idea that has been
 overthrown is that ‘there are dirty fuels’. It was never
 true as the observations was based on the combustion
 technologies available at the time.
  Changing the technology has transformed the
 consequence.

 I was at a ProBEC conference once
 at which it was plainly stated that ‘wood is a smoky
 fuel’. I pointed out that we had far better combustors
 these days and that it was no
  longer true all the time. The reply was, “Well that is
 all interesting but wood is such a smoky fuel!”

 Now we face the same situation
 with coal. The devices for kerosene were always clean
 burning – some of them – since 80 years ago.  Imagine,
 it has taken that long to get the
  message through. We can’t afford to wait that long again.
 We need a communication paradigm that has
 shifted.

 Regards
 Crispin

 If the ideas that permeate this
 sector haven’t

 The problem I see is that we
 are too focused on stove technology. We are not looking at
 the context in which the problems exist. My view is that
 little progress will be made until we reject and replace
 most,
  if not all, of the 20th century "zombie"
 ideologies. These zombies create a framework that
 essentially prevents the necessary political, economic, and
 social changes that would allow better stoves to play a
 constructive role in solving the problems created
  by these very same zombies. The voters in the US clearly
 rejected more of the same old same old. However, the only
 real choice they had was a backwards view offering a return
 to a simulacrum of an imagined 18th century.  I have yet to
 see a vibrant and dynamic
  vision of a regenerative 21st century. Clearly, the
 Democratic Party failed to offer such a vision as an
 alternative to the offering made by team Trump.  And now we
 will all pay the price for this failure to create and offer
 a forward looking vision.  Better
  stoves will come into their own only when  such a vision
 is articulated and adopted very widely.

 Jock Gill

 P. O. Box
 3

 Peacham, VT
 05862

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