[Stoves] Testing versus stove acceptance (was bue no longer abour Re: China and cookstoves [

Nikhil Desai pienergy2008 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 4 19:54:03 CST 2017


Paul:

Not too fast, please, about "But if you have to choose only one, the
acceptance wins, hands down."

When users accept with inadequate information - say, testing for safety,
reliability, durability - there is a real risk of not just unwise
investments but loss of reputation for not just the particular manufacturer
but the whole "cause" of stoving.

Maybe there shouldn't be such a "cause" quality or zeal to stove
development. GACC CEO in her Foreword to this ESMAP Technical Paper 007/15
wrote:

"2015 is a critically important year for international development. Events
such as the Post-2015 Summit, the Beijing+20 conference, and the 21st
session of the Conference of Parties (COP) give world leaders an
unprecedented opportunity to make momentous progress on health, women’s
empowerment, the environment, and climate protection. This year, the focus
must be on implementation of proven solutions that can deliver benefits
across multiple sectors and are ready to scale up."

I submit nothing of the kind has happened since except for LPG and
electricity.

She wrote "Hundreds of millions of women were literally risking their lives
each day to cook food for their families over inefficient cookstoves and
polluting open fires, and spending hours gathering fuel often at great
personal risk."

I invite Sumi Mehta - cc'd here - to show us how many lives were made less
risky in the last two years. Five hundred? Five million? (Keep in mind that
roughly 50 million more girls cross the age 10 or puberty every year in
that demographic of "people cooking with solid fuels" that GACC pretends to
raise money for.)

The less said the better on GACC CEO's claim "We are now closer to
achieving a set of global standards that will help us deliver high-quality,
effective, and independently tested products." They fixed the metrics and
the test protocols so as to stifle development of reliable, usable
products.

Unfortunately, unless you are GACC with its non-transparent operations and
a confirmed attitude of non-accountability - not even to its clients, it
seems - there cannot be funds for project implementation. (We should all
try to gather how much GACC did when its CEO mentioned "This year..")

For the mere mortals in the business of publicly accountable expenditures,
"funding for project implementation" will have to go in tandem with testing
and stove-acceptance, whether you like it or not.

Yes, WBREDA may grant your Deganga project owners some implementation
assistance without additional testing and confirming stove-acceptance. I
don't know what to suggest. Perhaps GACC should take the lead in
identifying examples such as yours where implementation funds can be tied
to "performance reports". (I forget the term in construction business when
a contractor gets paid according to work completed.)

Perhaps other stove designers and implementers should come together and
challenge GACC to support them for implementation of stoves and fuels
already found to be accepted and used without subjecting them to "ISO
standardized" WBT or IWA Tier rankings or any such puffery.

Three years ago GACC claimed
<http://cleancookstoves.org/about/news/12-02-2014-cookstoves-future-summit-report-available.html>
that at its Cookstoves Future Summit "*A total of $413 million in grant and
investment funding was raised." *This was over and above its contracts till
then. Its most recent 2016 Progress Report
<http://cleancookstoves.org/resources/495.html> says nothing about even a
penny spent on anything in particular.

GACC is evidently good for its favorites and can get away with publishing
colorful reports and serving imperial dinners. A thorough financial and
performance audit should be demanded by American taxpayers.

Nikhil





On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 9:49 PM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:

> Stovers,
>
> The diplomatic comment is that there should be BOTH testing AND stove
> acceptance.
>
> But if you have to choose only one, the acceptance wins, hands down.  The
> proof of the pudding is in the eating, not in the receipe.
>
> For a decade since 2005, I worked much on getting good test results for
> the TLUD stoves.  The NUMBERS.   Oh yes, the NUMBERS.   Stove camps,
> comparisons, measurements,
>
> And I struggled to get a successful TLUD stove project somewhere,
> anywhere.   But in 2015, I found out about two things that happened without
> my direct involvement.
>
> 1.  In 2015, the GACC and ESMAP published ESMAP Tech Report 007 about the
> status of cookstoves.   There, in Figure 1, the gasifier stoves were
> classified in the category of "Clean Cooking Solutions" and were called
> ADVANCED.  We can safely assume that appropriately qualitied experts were
> making the decisions.  It is no longer a case of specific numbers and Tier
> x.x designations.  Use the numbers if you want to do so, and there are
> still some variations between the various models of gasifiers, but the
> gasifiers have made it into the big time, and the standard ICS have not.
> For clarity, I prepared the "Classification of Stoves....." document that
> is faithful to the ESMAP publication.  www.drtlud.com/2017/04/11/
> classification-stove-technologies-fuels/      If anyone disagrees about
> that, I refer them to the GACC and ESMAP.  And very favorable test results
> keep coming in.
>
> 2.  In late 2015 I found out about the TLUD stove project in progress
> since 2012 in Deganga, India.  I was a co-author on the report (
> www.drtlud.com/deganga2016 ) about that highly successful pilot study
> with 11,000 quite satisfied users of TLUD stoves.  If acceptance by users
> is an issue, I refer people to that report and to visit the project areas
> in West Bengal.
>
> So, now the TLUD stoves have both aspects well supported.  Testing and
> stove acceptance.   Of course there is still much more work to be done.
>
> But the major effort has shifted to what Philip and Nikhil have mentioned,
> specifically the search for funding for project implementation.  Not for
> testing.   Not for a stove-acceptance study.  (although testing and
> acceptance are both closely watched in every effort.)
>
> Still working on TLUD stoves.
>
> Paul
>
> Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
> Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
> Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072 <(309)%20452-7072>
> Website:  www.drtlud.com
>
> On 12/3/2017 10:09 AM, Nikhil Desai wrote:
>
> Philip:
>
> I had a different reason - one-time subsidies for capital costs are easier
> to design and implement. The main issue is what stoves (and pots if
> possible) are in fact used and whether the running costs are affordable for
> a large segment.
>
> Much of the woodstove design work is stuck in fundamental deceit of
> metrics and testing protocols that do not answer the question whether the
> stove can be expected to be used. (I can design capital subsidies for
> briquetting and pellet-making).
>
> Not a whole lot of good is going to be done by issuing some ISO reports.
> Nor is SE4All going to come up with $4 billion a year I read Kyte announced
> at CCF 2017.
>
> I don't see any tenable theory of change in current EPA/WHO work including
> that in TC-285. Pending that, poor people will have to spend $400 for a
> stove they can be proud of and can use. (EPA wants to legislate coal out of
> existence around the world. Fat chance.)
>
> Nikhil
>
>>
>>
>
>
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