[Stoves] The WBT allows for comparison between tests and stoves, says Winrock

[Nikhil Desai]

Xavier:

Apologies for a delayed response.

You have finally hit the wall of incompetence and lack of authority. This
is not the only example of stove designers and marketers being stuck in the
failure loop. To me, the very metrics anointed by IWA guaranteed that GACC
would do the dirty job of working in secrecy, with ANSI in tow, to carry on
false promised built on false premises. Nobody cares about stove developers
who seek to please the stove users. Customers have been turned into objects
for aDALYs.

I empathize - "I am tired of repeating the same warnings, and seeing
publications that are openly lying to everyone. It is their job to provide
sound advices, they are not doing their job and much worse, they are
choosing to mislead project implementers around the world."

Nobody is bothered by your warnings or by the deceit of WBT. Your error lay
in assuming that anybody you complained to (or about) had any authority to
set things right. Or any incentive to do so.

You are also mistaken in thinking that anybody promoting WBT is doing a
job. Their interest is in issuing fake ISO Certificates and in misleading
project implementers, giving an excuse to CDM and Gold Standard to carry on
their own fakery. This is a house of cards, with paper tigers roaming
around the yard to protect the house.

GACC is a project housed in UNF. It has no authority to decide on stove
testing protocol, and has no incentive to formally question WBT. The bosses
at EPA and other donors to GACC did not put in their agreements with GACC
that it promote WBT, nor are they bothered with what test protocols are
used by whom. Winrock is merely reporting under some contract. Its claim
that this Toolkit is "*aimed at bringing USG staff and external project
developers and implementers up-to-speed" *means nothing until USG staff
cares to be "up to speed" about anything or just want to pretend that
something is being done. That's the modus operandi of bureaucracy "Don't
ask questions. Don't raise questions. Answer questions with maximum
evasiveness. Spend the money, and wire in more money in future budgets."

The modus operandi of the contractors is, unsurprisingly, "Keep your nose
to the ground, don't rock the boat, throw your weight around, sell
reputations". Neither GACC or Winrock nor WHO have put much of their own
money into the real game - what I call "design and promotion of usable
solid fuel stoves" (not just for households). WHO Indoor Air's mere
interest is blowing smoke and hot air.

As I said, "Money speaks". And money can also choose to stay silent.

The people whose money matters - bureaucrats at EPA or UKAid or such - have
shown themselves to be disinterested in holding GACC accountable except for
their own narrow interest in spending the money. (Yes, this is a marriage
of convenience between those whose careers are built on spending money on
research and those whose careers are built on making tall claims based on
such research. There are exceptions, but you get the idea.

My main gripe with EPA and WHO is that nothing, nothing under their own
projects (rather than citations) smacks of reality. No idea of residential
locations and structures. No ideas of actual fuels and stoves in use. At
best, spotty measurements of efficiencies and concentrations, the rest is
steam.

Unfortunately, nothing can be done because I suspect EPA and WHO do not
have any authority under their own charters and work plans to do anything
other than research and propaganda. We in the "stovers" community have
failed to ask the right questions from the very beginning of this yet
another round of junkets from regulators and academics in service to them
for a price.

I don't know how to put up a united opposition to this charade. None of us
seems to have any authority either. What you did with WBT, I tried with my
call to transfer GACC out of UNF, which may offer an opportunity to create
a work plan that assign meaningful tasks.

The real scandal is that brain power (fuel) is inefficiently applied in
academic research projects (stove) producing a lot of smoke in sealed
environments (groupthink) to produce inedible cakes (papers published in
peer-reviewed journals).

Reading the Thai report last night reminded me that there were folks at
USAID who knew what they were doing and had a laudable purpose - fund
ground-level work. EPA, the other partner of PCIA, didn't care to know what
it was doing, nor had any purpose other than pleasing the boss (lately Gina
McCarthy, who is now gone).

It is not enough to parrot noble intent and scream there is a "health
crisis" (as WHO did). If the actions don't include support for stove
designers and marketers, time and money are wasted and the poor of the
world hoodwinked again.

Nikhil
------

On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 5:33 PM, Xavier Brandao <xav.brandao at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Nikhil,
>
>
>
> This is not acceptable.
>
> I am tired of repeating the same warnings, and seeing publications that
> are openly lying to everyone. It is their job to provide sound advices,
> they are not doing their job and much worse, they are choosing to mislead
> project implementers around the world.
>
>
>
> *« **After all, it is factually correct that "The laboratory-based WBT is
> the most standardized of the three, and allows for comparison between
> stoves." Whether such lab results and their comparisons mean anything is
> another question. »*
>
> That’s playing with words. People who made and supported the WBT wanted a
> standardized test, allowing for comparison. It is not, it doesn’t allow for
> anything valuable. It is nothing but a piece of junk.
>
>
>
> If you want I can design a most standardized test allowing to compare
> apples and oranges.
>
> You use this protocol:
>
> http://wheeldecide.com/
>
> Then you enter the results in a spreadsheet.
>
> The laboratory-based wheel game is the most standardized test, and allows
> for comparison between apples and oranges. Whether such lab results and
> their comparisons mean anything is another question.
>
> Not my problem.
>
>
>
> *« Does it really matter what GACC and Winrock, BAMG or D-Lab do, or even
> what EPA does? How much money have they got? »*
>
> Yep, it does, because they are in part responsible for that:
>
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/these-cheap-clean-
> stoves-were-supposed-to-save-millions-of-lives-what-happene
> d/2015/10/29/c0b98f38-77fa-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.
> html?utm_term=.33e16e3879bd
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/cookstoves-
> design-poor-communities-refugees-unhcr-ikea
>
>
>
> We can thank this toolkit for keeping us stuck in this failure loop.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> Xavier
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *De :* Nikhil Desai [mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com
> <pienergy2008 at gmail.com>]
> *Envoyé :* dimanche 19 novembre 2017 20:46
> *À :* Xavier Brandao
> *Cc :* ederby at winrock.org; Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
> *Objet :* Re: [Stoves] The WBT allows for comparison between tests and
> stoves, says Winrock
>
>
>
> Xavier:
>
>
>
> Money speaks.
>
>
>
> EPA and its contractors have huge vested interests in manufacturing
> untenable claims.
>
>
>
> Conceit is a precondition for passing deceit. Winrock is only a
> contractor, mostly of USG to my knowledge when it comes to stoves. Same is
> true of UNF and Berkeley entities, or D-Lab and ARC for that matter. They
> cannot afford to be independent and unbiased.
>
>
>
> I have no problem that USG contractors seek to promote USG interests. If
> USG wants to condition its support for cookstoves on misleading methods, it
> has the power to do so. There ought to be some lawsuit against or
> Congressional inquiry into the purpose of such practices.
>
>
>
> After all, it is factually correct that "The laboratory-based WBT is the
> most standardized of the three, and allows for comparison between stoves."
> Whether such lab results and their comparisons mean anything is another
> question.
>
>
>
> Bureaucratic and fee-for-service for-hire agents in academic, research,
> and advocacy business constitute what is referred to as "the deep state."
>  Their interests do not necessarily coincide with the public interest
> generally or the interests of Third World cooks in this particular case.
>
>
>
> All I can say is that non-US governments should be wary of USG interests
> and bullying. Walking away from ISO TC-285 would be a good idea.
>
>
>
> EPA and its contractors have squandered an opportunity to do something
> good by the people they claim to want to help.
>
>
>
> Gravediggers may fill the graves when monies run out.
>
>
>
> Does it really matter what GACC and Winrock, BAMG or D-Lab do, or even
> what EPA does? How much money have they got?
>
>
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
>
> On Nov 19, 2017, at 12:37 PM, "Xavier Brandao" <xvr.brandao at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> Winrock has recently published, on September 2017, on its website, a
> toolkit:
>
> https://www.winrock.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Winrock_
> Cookstove_final_reduced.pdf
>
> The toolkit *« can be used by various stakeholders, but is primarily
> aimed at bringing USG staff and external project developers and
> implementers up-to-speed on significant developments in the cookstove
> sector in recent years. »*
>
>
>
> According to the toolkit, p 20, *« Standardized laboratory testing
> protocols and metrics allow for replicability and comparability among tests
> and across stoves »,* and *« The laboratory-based WBT is the most
> standardized of the three, and allows for comparison between stoves. »*
>
>
>
> It is unbelievable that Winrock still publishes this kind of claim, today.
> I am baffled. This has been time and time again proven wrong, and time and
> time again repeated, on this list and elsewhere that the WBT did not allow
> to compare stoves. That it should not be used to select stoves, for
> programmatic or project purposes.
>
> Even the very rare supporters of the WBT (I am not sure who they are
> actually) agree about that.
>
>
>
> I am not even talking about the proofs that the WBT is not even good to
> develop stoves.
>
>
>
> In February 2017, a study by Lombardi and al. summarized the issues:
>
> *« Some of WBT critical issues remain unsolved. In particular, the main
> weakness of the WBT concerns its real-life relevance. […] Criticism about
> WBT concerns also the repeatability of the protocol, with a number of
> researchers claiming that it would need to be reviewed in terms of
> accuracy. […] As a matter of fact, uncertainties related to temperature
> reading and vaporisation in the boiling region lead to high variability
> between test replicates.*
>
> *A lot of debate has been made around formulation of metrics, primarily on
> thermal efficiency, which is often interpreted as the most immediate and
> distinctive stove performance parameter. Studies from Bailis et al.
> highlighted how relying on WBT thermal efficiency outputs, regardless of
> the relative importance of high and low power cooking tasks among the
> target population, can lead to misleading interpretations. Furthermore,
> Zhang et al. and Jetter et al. questioned the scientific meaningfulness of
> thermal efficiency at simmering. *
>
> *Finally, some unsolved issues concerning statistical significance of data
> are worth mentioning. WBT 4.2.3 includes “Statistic Lessons for Performance
> Testing”. The appendix specifies that the minimum number of test replicates
> for each model of stove should be three, […] Wang et al. investigated this
> topic using a simplified version of the WBT 3.0 and demonstrated that more
> than 5 replicates are likely to be required to avoid impractically large
> 95% confidence intervals and that even more replicates may be required to
> demonstrate a statistically significant difference in performance between
> two or more stoves. »*
>
>
>
> Yet, Winrock, like the GACC and D-Lab and their handbook, are again
> proving themselves to be the gravediggers of the already struggling project
> developers and implementers, rather than the much needed support they
> should be, on matters of testing.
>
>
>
> This is totally irresponsible from Winrock, and very concerning.
>
>
>
> I put Elisa Derby in copy of this email.
>
>
>
> Elisa, I am very much looking forward to hear your views on that.
>
>
> Best,
>
>
> Xavier
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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