[Stoves] News: World Bank blog on eradicating household air pollution

Tue Apr 18 08:17:19 CDT 2017

Crispin:

Relax. These bloggers are tilting against windmills and so are you, I am
afraid. World Bank is not proposing LPG for heating stoves in Kyrgyzstan.

Yes, there is a fake, ideological, cultural war in the name of premature
mortality by solid fuels. The gas and electric industries may seem to
benefit, but people aren't rushing to buy gas or electricity to save their
lives but because they are convenient and versatile. Hundreds of millions
of people are waiting for usable solid fuel stoves, I assure you. They just
don't listen to BBC - even Hindi, Tamil or Urdu editions - nor read WHO
reports.

The primary author here is an Environmental Health lead at the World Bank,
and once used to work for Occidental Petroleum, Armand Hammer's oil
company. The secondary author, Larsen, is a hack for Bjorn Lomborg's
Copenhagen Consensus Centre. I checked out his paper on Bangladesh; I can
trash it in four hours, but it's not worth my time.

Lomborg too thinks air pollution kills 7 million people a year and
says says "Providing 1.4 billion people with such improved stoves would
save almost 450,000 lives a year and avoid almost 2.5 billion days of
illness annually."

Yeah, right. An accidental epidemiologist. Lomborg lies. He could join
Goldman Sachs and market aDALYs.

<http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-01/16/content_19333444.htm>
Better stoves can reduce indoor pollution
<http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-01/16/content_19333444.htm>,
Bjorn Lomborg, China Daily US Edition, 16 Jan 2015

------------------------------

That said, the blog is very carefully written, including the last sentence
- "eventually there will need to be a switch from solid fuels to LPG or
electricity."

That choice isn't and wouldn't be dictated by fiat but by dwelling type,
location, and preferences.

In the meantime, pay attention to Paul Anderson. Making and burning
"combustion gases" is probably key to making clean enough, usable,
marketable stoves using solid fuels, direct or processed. Beginning with
"productive uses". (How about kilns and bakeries? I heard some estimate
that 0.5-1 kg of raw wood was required to make a loaf of wood in some parts
of Africa.)

If only the stovers stopped boiling water and gave WHO a pass.

Nobody is saying technologies don't change. You know, however, whose
mindsets fixed in the 19th Century. When we stop fighting deforestation,
climate change and global burden of disease, maybe we will get to the real
challenge - "For hundreds of millions of people that is access to modern
energy in the form of affordable, advanced solid fuel combustion
technologies. "

I don't care what the initial physical form of the fuel is, just chemistry
of fuel, combustion, air. Cooking is smell chemistry and temperature.

Nikhil

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(India +91) 909 995 2080 <+91%2090999%2052080>
*Skype: nikhildesai888*

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 2:47 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Nikhil
>
> Thanks for that contribution. It is obvious that the 'war on solid fuels'
> is based on the erroneous assumption that technologies for burning the are
> static and nothing can be invented that ‎will change whatever relationship
> they found between the state of the fuel (solid) and the state of the
> alternative (liquid).
>
> It reminds me of the assertion in about 1840 that everything that will
> ever be invented already had been.
>
> A tight biomass stove with no improvement in combustion performance
> connected to a tight chimney and installed in a deep rural area in any of
> those three countries ‎will have a very positive benefit for the family
> living in the home.
>
> The Fresh Air study just completed in the pilot study homes in Kyrgyzstan
> showed that advanced stoves operated improperly result in less than optimal
> results, underlining the ‎importance of user training. When additional
> training was provided the IAQ of those homes aligned with the others.
>
> Tests conducted by Altanzul Jargalsaikhan on a TJ4.0 raw coal stove
> ‎showed once again that solid fuels can be burned with PM emissions below
> the detection limit.
>
> I encourage other researchers looking at advanced combustion systems to
> bring forth additional evidence. I attended the Langfang Stove Expo
> yesterday with many of the people active in such research. We toured a
> factory in the afternoon that manufactures ‎a coal stove with features
> remarkably similar to the TJ4.0 and a biomass briquette stove that is
> essentially the same but with secondary air provided (this being an
> essential difference necessary to get a similar level of performance).
>
> If I were funded by the LP Gas association I might sing a different tune
> but as an independent voice I can point out what is happening on the
> ground.
>
> If cost, access and health benefits are the principal goals, then the
> Kyrgyzstan Stove Pilot has demonstrated in the space of one year (from
> product development to IAQ and personal exposure monitoring) that these
> benefits are available to a much broader audience than only those with
> access to LPB, subsidised or not.
>
> Further, the chances of heating homes in Naryn District of Kyrgyzstan at
> -35 C with LPG are, in my lifetime, zero.
>
> We should concern ourselves with the issues of the age in which we live.
> ‎For hundreds of millions of people that is access to modern energy in the
> form of affordable, advanced solid fuel combustion technologies.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
> Eradicating household air pollution will pay for itself
> <http://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/eradicating-household-air-pollution-will-pay-itself> 7
> Aprill 2017
> Extract:
>
> "Two major interventions have been assessed in a recent World Bank study
> in Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua:
>
> i)        the introduction of improved biomass cook stoves that contain
> enclosed chimneys to vent fumes directly outside from the burning of solid
> fuels; and
>
> ii)      the replacement of solid fuels with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
>
> Benefits of both interventions outweigh the costs as shown by benefit-cost
> ratios exceeding one (Table 1).  Previous studies by the World Bank in
> Colombia, Hidalgo in Mexico, and Peru show similar results.  Roughly 40–70
> percent of the benefits come from improved health. Fuelwood savings and
> time savings also contribute equally to the benefits. The cost of switching
> to LPG stoves is higher than for improved cookstoves because of the cost of
> LPG fuel. However, the health benefits of switching to LPG are
> significantly higher than for improved cookstoves. In other words, improved
> cookstoves may be the most efficient solution as reflected by the high
> benefit-cost ratios, but not the most effective solution.  This implies
> that in order to reduce household air pollution to desired levels,
> eventually there will need to be a switch from solid fuels to LPG or
> electricity.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Nikhil Desai
> (India +91) 909 995 2080 <+91%2090999%2052080>
> *Skype: nikhildesai888*
>
>
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