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

[Traveller]

Yes, sir!

I did not mean you, though I wanted to mention you and forgot. (We first
met at the Ghion bar one afternoon and went to the Italian club for
dinners.)

I found this piece on the list by Mike Bess - http://stoves.
bioenergylists.org/stovesdoc/Bess/Mirte.htm. It mentions "John Parry
Workshops" from where the Mirt designer came to Addis.

There is an MSc thesis from Addis Ababa University - ASSESSING
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS OF MIRT STOVE WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TOINDOOR AIR
POLLUTION (Carbon monoxide & Suspended particulate matter) AND
ENERGYCONSERVATION
<http://etd.aau.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/1140/2/YOSEF%20ASSEFA.pdf>(2007).
It's not at all the case that net greenhouse increment from any and all
biomass burning is zero. In fact, I am curious that Ethiopia's considerable
coal resource has gone unexploited (there was some work on this in the
geological department in the campus shared by the EEA then.)

Research for the thesis was not done in actual household conditions but in
a temporary shed aside the GTZ-Sun office made to replicate a kitchen.

The thesis is a good reference for description of such tests and the
methodological issues. I have now forgotten Grant Ballard-Tremeer's PhD
thesis on stove-testing protocols (such as those existed and were used by
then). I had also forgotten this trick of "CO as a surrogate indicator of
particulate matter."

Frankly, I don't think biomass cooking is a subject to be decided by
scientists boiling water in labs. That such testing has been used to
generate the WHO "database" and the whole theology of Burden of Disease is,
as far as I am concerned, over-scientism. The poor suffer the consequences
of this cult science.

N


---------
(India +91) 909 995 2080

On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 1:33 PM, Stephen Joseph <joey.stephen at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks for passing this evaluation on.
>
> Just to say that I worked with 5 women users , a Kenyan stove
> designer/producer and 4 Ethiopian scientists and engineers to develop the
> Mirte and the Lakech stove.
>
> It was a great project as the women were instrumental in developing the
> Mirte design that is still in production.
>
> I went to Ethiopia at Xmas and was really surprised to see these stoves
> for sale and in households where I was invited to visit.
>
> All of the stove projects I was involved in in the 80s and early 90's were
> established so that women users had the major role in the design and field
> testing.  I believe many of these programs have resulting in self
> sustaining commercialisation.
>
> The local implementing groups also carried out extensive monitoring and
> evaluation of pilot and then dissemination programs.  This work was
> presented in a conference in Guatemala in I think 1986 by the Foundation
> for Woodstove dissemination.
>
> A group of field people wrote a manual on monitoring and evaluation of
> cookstove projects for FAO and I think this is still on the web.
>
> PS
>
> My name is Steve but I dont smoke but maybe it was one of the engineers
> that set up the manufacturing process in Ethiopia.  My work finished after
> we had pilot tested the stove.
>
>
> Stephen Joseph
>
> On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 6:56 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 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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