[Stoves] SilverFire / UCEED (University Center for excellence and developmental disabilities targeted families). Stoves to Puerto Rico

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

Corruption need not be financial. That said, it could range from illicit to
criminal.

Mere errors are not corruption. Intent matters. Inadvertent misleading,
protection of egos and careers, is to me mere error.

Policy disagreements should be evaluated independently; one side calling
another corrupt only says that when public monies are concerned, there
needs to be transparency and accountability.

Perhaps EPA and State/USAID Inspectors General - or the General Accounting
Office - may pick up investigations, but there is so much groupthink around
IWA and TC-285 that nobody would see or smell a rat.

You shouldn't condemn the whole "US-funded stoves community". That includes
privately funded stoves research and promotion like by STI, and also
USAID-funded Thailand research.

All that I see is that EPA applied its NSPS ideology to IWA and then handed
over PCIA to an organization - UNF - that has zero competence in the
matter.

Shit happened.

Do you know whose money UNF was spending in that "one case" you mention? If
that donor let - or required - GACC to choose WBT, I can hardly fault GACC.
Herd mentality is untreatable.

As for GACC taking over "custodianship", all I can say is that nobody owns
WBT, nobody has the authority to require or cancel the use of WBT. GACC or
anybody can do anything their whims, and make any claims they feel like. It
is the unfortunate poor countries' governments and civic society groups
that get fooled or forced into accepting GACC verbiage hook, line and
sinker. I for one don't care that WBT is not reliable for efficiencies in
actual use.

You are as much of a groupthinker in accepting efficiency as the sole
metric - nobody has yet bothered to compare lab v. field CO and PM2.5
emission rates or any other metrics that the users may hold important - and
then criticizing WBT.

Physik-ists make energy balances, count joules,  and compute trees and
DALYs. Very amusing.

There is no "stove sector" or "stove community". Stop pretending and
fooling. There are road warriors of tremendous experience and insights, and
there are charlatans.

Nikhil



On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 6:38 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Nikhil and Todd
>
>
>
> Much as I had higher hopes for the US-funded stoves community, I agree
> with the evaluation given below.
>
>
>
> I am not sure how you define ‘corruption’. It matters more that
> significant advances in testing and product development have been
> deliberately blocked, meaning as a conscious act, not incompetence. In one
> case the GACC required, as a condition of funding a national stove
> programme, that two people they identified not be permitted to participate,
> one the international advisor of the national programme and the other, the
> one directing testing and test methods. Is that business as usual or
> unusual business?
>
>
>
> I am interested to know from anyone on this list of the GACC has required,
> as a condition of getting funds for a stove programme, the use of the WBT
> for product rating and selection. The GACC very publicly (in North
> Carolina) accepted to take over the custodianship of the WBT and it is
> literally “their test method” now. It has also been just as publicly
> criticized very specifically for technical errors. Some of these errors
> have been quietly corrected. Some have been publicly corrected, and many
> more have not.
>
>
>
> What is a problem is any demand to use a test method with such important
> known defects* as a condition of getting funded*. Everyone agrees,
> everyone, that the WBT does not predict performance in the field. This
> statement has nearly always been accompanied by some qualification saying
> that while it is good for product development and pre-screening, field
> evaluations should always be done.  Well, *stop right there*! If it
> doesn’t predict even reasonable, performance in use, it sure as heck should
> not be used for pre-screening anything. “Pig in a poke
> <http://www.dictionary.com/browse/pig-in-a-poke>” and all that.
>
>
>
> If the entire stove community, including the WBT authors and proponents
> and custodian agree that no WBT reasonable predicted field performance,
> then all WBT results should be chucked in favour of either a recalculation
> or testing. Deleted with these results should be the Stove Comparison Chart
> with all its misrepresentations.
>
>
>
> Re-rated properly, the most significant changes in ratings will be seen
> for TLUD gasifiers that make charcoal, and Rocket Stoves (because they make
> above-average amounts of char). It would be interesting to see where
> charcoal stoves land on a new rating platform.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Crispin
>
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