[Stoves] Rwanda charcoal (Was Thai Bucket Stove)

Nikhil Desai pienergy2008 at gmail.com
Tue Dec 5 00:03:26 CST 2017


Crispin:

Rwanda and Robert is an exceptional mix. What happened there simply cannot
be easily replicated elsewhere. Different contexts. (Too many personal
associations; I won't say more. But I am sure Tom Miles and some others who
have designed and/or financed and/or implemented projects in cooking energy
know how many stars have to be aligned before a success can happen and even
more to replicate it.)

Yes "It is reasonable to ask what the current situation is when assessing
what to do or building an argument in favour of a certain intervention."

First define the problem. Or parameters of a problem so you can define what
the context is, and how to set service standards and public policy goals.

Please get over this physik-ist, technocratic notions of efficiency,
emission rates, blah blah. When you look at how much wood moves from place
x to place y and z, where it or its product is burnt, ask -- "Who is doing
the moving? Why? What are their incentives and what explains their lethargy
or inability/unwillingness to what you think is the right thing to do? Are
they ignorant and stupid, or are they quietly trying to tell you that you
are the one who is ignorant and stupid?

Sorry to sound arrogant (which I am, and not ashamed of it), but I have
locked horns and bashed heads on this for decades. "Situation Assessments"
in terms of wood resource and use efficiencies are singularly useless data.

I have added Cecil to the cc list and am begging him, Ron, and anybody who
has lived and worked among poor people and also tried to program monies in
"stoves" projects to consider:

a. Is "cookstove replacement" the right paradigm for change? Why? Why has
it not been effective and sustained at a larger scale, with a faster pace?

b. What are the institutional *processes* and characteristics of *market
structures (for all the relevant goods and services) *that need to reform
in order to make a lasting change, light a wildfire (sorry, I had to use
that imagery)?

It is the behavioral aspect that helps define the problem -- there are ways
to improve women's and children's lives, give them modern alternatives to
traditional cooking in order to help the cook re-optimize her time
allocations and be pleased with herself, her chores -- and not the silly
Btu/bean/CO2-counting malaria.

And these behavioral aspects at the level of government and
intergovernmental bureaucracies, regulators, financial intermediaries,
research and advocacy organizations matter as to how monies can be moved.

I will leave you with a concise thought - process, not just substance;
capacity and incentives, not just reason and preaching.

Merely moving aid money around won't make a lasting difference. I know what
Gerry Leach was referring to in 1997 and I also know what Fernando Manibog
wrote about in 1983; monies were spent, knowledge generated, but with very
little evidence of change on the ground.

Nikhil





On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 12:23 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Dear Nikhil and Ron
>
>
>
> It is reasonable to ask what the current situation is when assessing what
> to do or building an argument in favour of a certain intervention.
>
> The situation with respect to the productivity of charcoal in Rwanda is
> not now what it was 13 years ago. By 2009 there were already 5 major
> charcoal production improvement projects under way. It became the thing to
> do to “save the forest” even though the area under forest had increased
> dramatically as noted below.
>
> The selective citing of national forests housing gorillas is an emotive
> plea that raises money but does not reflect the national situation at all,
> and never has, even if true for that locality. Robert told me last year
> there was no further cutting going on there – it was simply too valuable a
> resource for tourism and the government put a stop to it.
>
> The facts are that the area under forest has been increasing save for the
> interruption noted below, and that as the population increased, the forest
> area continued to increase even as the use of charcoal expanded. Now, the
> situation is that charcoal is produced sustainably once again, the area of
> trees is expanding and there are improvements both in the efficiency of
> charcoal production as well as stoves using it. What’s not to like?
>
> All the waste material from the charcoal production can be used: some
> fraction is left in the kiln, some branches are not charred, some roots
> perhaps could be added to the process. The point is that all the biomass
> should be charred. If the process heat can be used for something, great. No
> one is objecting to that as far as I know. If a stove can produce $0.035
> worth of charcoal per cooking event (assuming it has the same value per ton
> as lump char) and people find that return acceptable, they will do it. Ten
> cents a day is better than nothing.
>
> A major contributor may be the cost of wood compared with charcoal.
> Meaning wood fuel at the market – it may be more expensive than charcoal
> per kg, we should not be surprised.
>
> I would like a recent figure for charcoal production in wet tons of wood
> per ton of saleable lump charcoal.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Crispin
>
>
>
>
>
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