[Stoves] News October 2016: "Mirte" ("Best") mtad (injera stove) for Ethiopia - a Case Study (World Bank)

[Traveller]

Do households use improved cook stoves? What are the benefits? An Ethiopian
case study
<http://blogs.worldbank.org/developmenttalk/do-households-use-improved-cook-stoves-what-are-benefits-ethiopian-case-study>
World
Bank blog, Michael Toman, 7 October 2016.

I care little about Toman's cite-o-logy in the beginning. The key point is,

"A more fundamental issue, however, is that improved biomass cookstoves can
only improve the wellbeing of households and the environment *if they
actually* reduce fuelwood consumption and indoor smoke, and if people are
willing to substitute them for more traditional cooking methods. *If, for
example, the stoves are not used because users find them inconvenient or
strange, the technical performance characteristics of the stoves are
irrelevant*. " (emphasis added.)


*Actually*. What a nice idea. To check with cooks rather than with experts
and their databases, meta-analysis of literature, models and derivations
with 95% Uncertainty Intervals. (What is theory of uncertainty in each
case, I wonder.)

In this case, "check with cooks" was done by electronic monitors attached
to stoves in 360 households over a year. It shouldn't have taken 20 years
to do such a study, which will be quickly forgotten or cited ten thousand
times without being replicated a thousand times over. But at least the
World Bank took the advice of consultants who prepared the design report: RBA
design options for the National Programme for Improved Household Biomass
Cook Stoves Development & Promotion in Ethiopia
<http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/816151468126903311/pdf/958220ESM0P1270a0Case0Study02014008.pdf>.
(Never heard of this group before; don't know anybody in their team.)

"The cookstove programme may, for instance, attempt to change the energy
ecosystem by increasing availability of improved cookstoves and cooking
fuel, which improves the *usability* of energy for cooking for households,
leading them to use higher quality cooking services that reduces fuel
collection times, improves health and reduces deforestation.


If possible, disbursement should be made on the basis of *an outcome
indicator measuring changes in the usability* of energy for cooking, not an
output indicator measuring changes in availability of improved cookstoves."
(emphasis added)


*Usability*. What a revolutionary concept. Puts a lie to the EPA/GACC
shenanigans at the ISO IWA. Boiling water on stoves that have not been
proven in the market is "premature" (I think Cecil said it). It doesn't do
anything but generate silly academic debates about what is "clean enough".
(Funding research and advocacy for the sake of research and advocacy for
the sake of... We have been there for some 40 years now.)

The paper does recognize that usability is an abstract concept - not
subject to scientific metrics - and that "good usability still does not
guarantee impact."

So what? The scientist-ic pretense that ignores consumer preferences and
habits is worth less than nothing. That pretense has kept the "practical
stovers" at bay for decades, and those who churn peer-reviewed cakes keep
on gaining weight.

Academic fiddlers play the tunes they want to sell. I for one don't buy
Toman's claim that injera baking "represents the end-use for approximately
half of all primary energy consumed in the country." (His citation
<http://www.genderconsult.org/uploads/publications/doc/SAFE_Ethiopia_Appraisal_Report_Final_Draft_2.pdf>
has no numbers. It seems a dumb statement. Could be plausible if it meant a
half all primary energy consumed for cooking, but even then I doubt it;
only if it meant only household cooking and woody biomass use.)

At least, this World Bank experiment was with real people and with the
right objective. Toman says,

"These results correspond with other recent experimental research conducted
in Africa (e.g. Bensch and Peters, 2013 in Senegal
<http://le.uwpress.org/content/89/4/676.full.pdf>), but contrast markedly
with recent findings from Orissa, India reported in Hanna et al. (2016
<https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20140008>). "


Methods apart, the main difference with Hanna et al. (2016) - a silly piece
of work to parade big names (I can send my reviews of their 2012 Working
Paper to those who interested) - is not just that it was a different
geography, different cuisine and use patterns, and different research
purpose, but that the academics deployed an "improved stove" that had never
been proven for its "usability". From what I was able to establish, their
"improved stove" was a design that the designer had stopped marketing, just
that it had met the GOI requirements for "improved woodstoves" under
GOI-specified test protocols (which have had a sad history, but let's not
go there.)



***************
All I learnt about cooking and household energy was from India, Indonesia,
Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, and Vanuatu. My brushes with stove designs
started in Ethiopia.

I observed the design and testing of this Mirte stove during my stay in
Addis in 1992 and 1993. The designer, a Steve (if I remember correctly; I
forget the last name) used to roll his cigarettes and tell me about the
materials, shaping, sizing, of what at first seemed like a simple cement
ring. We smoked outdoors or in hotel lobbies; 1/3 of my premature mortality
will be allocated to tobacco.

It was of central importance that Ethiopian cooking - at home or in
commercial cooking - required two different methods - injera-baking and
everything else.

An "improved" charcoal stove was also introduced in the Addis market just
before October 1992 and was a runaway success among the artisans and
customers. It was not usable for injeras.

Both of these were developed under a project financed by the World Bank,
implemented under the Ethiopian Energy Authority with technical support
from a UK company then called ESD - Energy for Sustainable Development (now
Camco).

The major change in urban cooking was in electricity.

Already by 1992, electric mtads had not only made significant inroads in
the Addis, so much so that the electric utility was worried about a late
morning peak developing that its then-small all-hydro system may develop
problem with, but had shifted the market to commercial injera-baking.
(Injeras are eaten cold. Restaurants made some for own use and also sold to
street customers, who either didn't have electric mtads or didn't have time
or hated wood mtads.)

Fast forward 20 years - by 2014, injeras were being *flown from Addis to
Washington, DC* stores (one next to a restaurant, on U Street at 10th NW, I
think). Last year I managed to go in the back of a store in Arlington, VA
to see how they were making injeras. The women started laughing at me when
I said I wanted to eat an injera warm; they did give me one and I ate it
there with berbere sauce.

Nikhil
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