[Stoves] Humanitarian Engineering

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

>Crispin: What if I told you - no proof yet - that the entire increment of energy requirement for cooking foods over the last 40 years as world population doubled was met by gas and electricity AND that...‎"

Dear Nikhil

‎Domestic cooking is not the major form of domestic energy consumption. Heating is. Space heating. 

I consider the correct response to your ‎proposal is to look at how efficiently energy is used, not at its relative portion of total use. So without answering your question at all, I propose the following scenario:

This winter we (World Bank Stove Pilot Project, Kyrgyzstan) demonstrated that CO2 emissions from coal burning home heating systems could be reduced by 40% with improved technologies. That should greatly interest those who have chosen to believe that reducing CO2 is a very important accomplishment to the extent that it is worth spending huge amounts of money to achieve. 

Well, I am all for that if the result is service delivery to the poor. The 'service factor' of the new stoves is far above that of the widely used products currently in everyone's homes.

If the issue is human health, then again, we demonstrated that improved stove technologies dramatically reduced exposure to smoke and CO, and provided a much higher indoor air temperature. The effect is so great that runny noses and bronchitis in the improved stove homes dripped to zero‎. So I am in favour of investing in making such technologies available as a matter of urgency. 

If the issue is economic, we also have a hit. The reduction in fuel consumption is a direct saving in expenditure for the home owners. It is not just 40%, it is also the fact that the leftover coal chips that are too small to be of interest to the regular market is the preferred fuel for the new high performance stoves. Combined with the ‎reduction if mass consumed, the total saving is about 1-(0.66*0.6)=0.6 or 60%. Let's round it down to half. I think it is worth converting the productive sector to make the new models instead of the old which might involve training, cast iron patterns and so forth. 

If the issue is outdoor air quality, again we have a major win. The new stoves produce about 1/1000th of the PM of traditional stoves and boilers. A reduction of 99.9% is a fair chunk. This refers to both PM2.5 as a species and Black Carbon, with the BC reduction probably being greater detail than the PM2.5 fraction because of the much higher temperature of the combustion. 

My point, getting back to your scenario, is that the contribution to pollution by domestic heating and cooking may be far less than the 2% estimate for 2057. You get the idea? Dramatic improvements in technology may change every part of the equation. Everything will, by then, be cheaper, cleaner, more convenient, more efficient, with a better delivery of convenient services.

Let's aim for that. 
Crispin