[Stoves] Usability of stoves - what lessons from Ethiopia Mirte experiment?

[Traveller]

I didn't see any reactions from the List except Ron's reference to TLUD in
Ethiopia. So some "lessons" I would like to suggest (below).

I wonder if there were any usability tests. In US regulatory practice,
there is a term I like - declaring an investment "used and useful" before
allowing the investor to earn a regulated return on it. There are so many
"improved biomass stoves"; I wonder if anybody has tried to estimate which
designs are "used and useful".

It shouldn't have taken Michael Toman & Co. or the Vivideconomics report on
Results Based Financing to do some simple observations and customer
satisfaction studies. Those should have been given to GACC and its donors
to justify grants for further innovation and yes, for subsidies.

Xavier Brandao had sent a very powerful post on 4th August 2016, asking for
a focused R&D effort. This is my non-cynical contribution.

My inspiration came from an SEI report Clearing the Smoke
<https://stockholmenvironmentinstitute.exposure.co/clearing-the-smoke> (7
June 2016) by Marie Jürisoo:

"It is far from straightforward to encourage people to choose to use a new
technology and *stick with that choice over time*, so users have to be
motivated, and a new stove has to demonstrate that it *lives up to
expectations the buyer had of it on the day of purchase*. And the
expectations are high, especially for cooking performance. When a stove
doesn’t meet these expectations, people will often abandon it. For example,
it must enable the cook to prepare an array of dishes."

I do not believe every new stove "must" enable the cook to do everything. I
am a firm believer in "stacking" as the adjustment mechanism of the poor.
(Even the rich stack gas, electricity, charcoal and wood; just walk around
in Washington, DC's rich neighborhoods. "Complete and permanent" transition
is GACC-ian gas.

But otherwise, the SEI piece emphasizes *expectations and motivations*. Not
much of a problem with LPG and electricity, and even though injeras are
made with electric mtads, actual use of Mirte is the first demonstration I
have ever seen of a wood (not charcoal) stove dedicated to a particular use
that users have *stuck with their choice over time*. (I am not EPA kind, to
assume that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Just find me
another such example of mass market transformation for household woodstoves
for a particular use or set of uses.)


**

Lessons the Mirte experience suggests to me and can be applied rather
quickly (2-5 years):

a) Time to get "stove science for the poor" off the blind alleys of
avoiding deforestation, GHG emissions, or premature mortality. (There is a
research report for REDD+ based on Mirte
<http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/791661467998796480/pdf/WPS7394.pdf>,with
Toman as a co-author). Pandering to over-scientism is not science.

b) Every dish matters. Together the cuisine makes up the diet and the art
of cooking and feeding; these cannot be separated.

c) Boiling water is best left to bean-counters; engineers and product
designers need to look at the cook, not the firebox.

d) Cultures adapt; they change cooking at home or if some stoves are not
good for some cooking, those dishes get "outsourced". (*)

e) It is not enough to change the "ecosystem of cooking" at home alone. For
developing standards and subsidy policies, the governments need to address
the entire cooking fuel market, on the one hand, and on the entire markets
for individual fuels (different kinds of solid biomasses and coals, gaseous
and liquid fuels, electricity or solar.) Where heating is a significant
load, if only seasonally, this gets somewhat more complicated.

f) Instead of pursuing some global magical stoves with voluntary emission
performance targets, stove science ought to give priority to contextual
design of solid fuel stoves - with incremental or quantum improvements in
both emission profiles and usability (convenience, other user preferences)
- for a wide array of size/shape, fuels, controls. A variation in
performance and price will emerge, as will competition from bioliquids,
biogasses, and other fuels. I say "incremental or quantum" because the
extent of total exposure to pollutants varies over regions and time and
will keep changing.

g) Develop investment requirements, intervention opportunities, and
financing plan. Why is it that the Turner Foundation claims to raise more
than $400 million and USG announces ~$250+ m of support that goes into the
insanity of boiling water and forecasting premature mortality instead of
helping the poor? Whose meals are being cooked?
-------

What is simply mindboggling is that even as GACC has "raised awareness" (if
opening the eyes of the blind is a worthwhile enterprise), it has taken 20
years to even propose a subsidy design for the poor using solid biomass in
Ethiopia.

And even that just for injera making.

And still in testing phase with methods and conclusions that could go on
being debated for another 20 years.

What went wrong? Why is it that LPG and electricity are amply subsidized
but solid fuel stoves haven't reached the usability levels where a
confident argument can be made about its reach and total benefits? (I have
seen enough calculations of "trees saved"; my EEA students and I did an
"integrated urban household energy strategy" to bring net deforestation
around Addis down to zero in less than ten years. I have never seen a tree
saved that can be banked or sold.)

Is that because the poor are condemned to "market discipline", subsidies
are for the rich?

Or because the advocates for "stoves" - "Whatever the question, the answer
is stoves; throw stoves and all will be well." - made all the wrong
promises that could not be met or the cooks did not care for?

I know there are exceptions. Maybe the ISO IWA people are testing stoves
that have proved popular in certain contexts, and need some certification
of performance in labs and outside. Maybe, the "fundamental folly" of the
ISO process can be amended for purposes other than global certification -
e.g., development of national test methods and certification for specific
tasks in specific geographies. (A lesson from the lighting market - there
isn't just one type of lighting demand that can be met by a miracle
lightbulb. Using CFLs in battery lanterns wasn't the final answer for
everybody everywhere.)

N

(*) There are many Indian dishes that upper-class urban families no longer
make at home either because they take too much time or cannot be made in
small batches (as families get smaller) or the gas/electric stoves are not
good enough. So these items are purchased from snack/sweet shops,
home-based small industries, or eaten in restaurants. Anil Rajvanshi had
the right idea about eating out.)
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