[Stoves] "Those of us who believe that the WBT is critical to stove improvement"

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott crispinpigott at outlook.com
Thu Dec 7 21:50:26 CST 2017


Dear Nikhil

I have let you get away with saying 'it is only efficiency' by repeatedly showing that fuel efficiency does matter both to most  users ‎and most stove promoting initiatives.

100% of the heating stoves in Central Asia are used for cooking. So no more about 'heating stoves'. They are multi-function. One of the important metrics in Kyrgyzstan is the ability to burn garbage. We test that too.

I suggest that time to boil is an important metric, not from pot-on but from ignition. There are very few reports of comparative boiling times for food but one is the Berkeley venture to Somalia. Can you guess which stove was the fastest to light and bring a pot to a boil? That is a metric combining rapid ignition and cooking power, neither reported separately these days. ‎This metric is highly valued in a purchasing decision in most countries. It is purely a bean counting exercise with a numerical result that can easily be related to adoption and pride of ownership.

Another is fuel flexibility which is a lab-assessable ‎function with a number of reporting metrics.

Yet another is specific heating power per unit area of the pot. This is a new metric in cooking and very valuable ‎as a predictor of user acceptance and cooking flexibility. There are lots of lab-based metrics that have been negotiated between the physics-ists and the users which are helpful in selection or pre-selection.

And we will continue to discover more because lab assessments are cheap and replicable and urgently needed.

Best regards
Crispin

Crispin:

For the umpteenth time, please keep heating stoves discussion separate from cookstoves. Or for that matter, commercial cookstoves (more like heating stoves, higher capacity utilization rates) from so-called household cookstoves (so-called because nobody has taken the trouble to characterize them except for parroting "three-stone fire and rudimentary cookstoves).

I wrote specifically this time - "Why, even Crispin so religiously believes that efficiencies of free fuel matter. No matter what the cost of an efficient stove."

If you are talking about charcoal, bioliquids, biogas, or even coal (as in Jharkhand) - i.e., purchased fuels of specific qualities, perhaps you will find some support for your theory that fuel efficiencies matter, but you will also find, if you bothered to look, that stove capital cost is balanced against the promised financial savings from higher fuel efficiency).

And when you turn to household cookstoves,show me how many households have 3Stone Fire and how many have in situ stoves, what they burn, how they acquire it or whether they purchase it at doorstep and at what cost, what they cook how,what kind of dwellings they live in and where their stoves are when. And document that when they have changed their cookstoves, they did so solely because of efficiency gains.

Until then, help the poor you can, and stop poking your nose in poor people's kitchens.  Leave it to Mrs. Clinton; she did and nothing good has come of it yet.

Why Is Hillary Clinton Peeping Into Indian Kitchens? <https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2F2011%2F04%2F12%2Fforbes-india-hillary-clinton-black-carbon-stoves-indian-kitchens.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7C88b75799356b48ff43e208d53ddfbf69%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636482953560427642&sdata=JZIQfSRBEjEc9Wi80%2B7TuN0UWfkzQKwxd3Dv9Nb%2FUVk%3D&reserved=0>
Forbes, 12 April 2011.

I know I forced you into a corner by saying "solely because of efficiency gains". But that - and that alone - has been the ever-elusive, illusionary goal of the stovers' movements, especially those stuck in boiling water with just one type of fuel and testing different types of stoves. Why, you easily walked in the trap I set  you - "No matter what the cost of an efficient stove."

Just why does efficiency by itself make any difference,when fuel costs are as low as claimed by many pundits (as in "free collection", though not a single study exists at a national level on what kinds of biomass fuels - ranging from trees and branches to crop waste (shells or stumps) to leaf waste to dung - have been used by whom, how, and how have the economics changed as some types of biomass has become difficult to collect free, as tens of millions of people have left farming and/or rural living, and girls have been spending more time in schools, even going to colleges to get ready for salaried jobs?

You will find all kinds of mindless theories without evidence, even in spite of the evidence that fuel efficiency is but one factors in stove choice and that many evaluations of cookstove programs have pointed out that poor people are rational and they have desires,aspirations different from the Western imperial environmentalists who want to save the earth and now claim to save lives.

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

And your heating stoves won't sell in hell.

Nikhil


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Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
Skype: nikhildesai888


On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 7:09 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com<mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:
Dear Nikhil

I will arrive later this morning in a place where fuel efficiency is the prime consideration for virtually all stove users. Your hobby horse about efficiency is lame in central Asia. ‎It more of a hobbled horse.

Poverty is real and we can double the disposable cash available in a rural home during ‎winter merely by switching stoves. I believe this is also the case in Ulaanbaatar where the repayment time for a really good stove is 8 weeks or something - the stove cost was covered by fuel purchase savings in 8 to 10 weeks.

The only "cost-free, effort-free, time-free fuel 'collection' system" is to tap into a District Heating system‎ undetected. If you have to pay for heat, in Bishkek it costs $8 per month. That is for the urban poor and elite. In rural areas heat costs the truly poor more than $50-100 a month. We have different definitions of 'free'.

Regards
Crispin in the West end of the East


Andrew:

Vehicle fleet buyers may think differently.

As in the case of stoves, operating hours and timing are up to the
user. Which is why there is a "context" in which EPA or other
regulators pursue emission standards for equipment such as diesel
vehicles.

If you recall, my primary objection to all this "standards" game is
that a) there is no service standard (boiling water is not a proxy for
anything) and b) there is no objective that these standards can
demonstrably serve.

For diesel vehicles, there is a service standard -- a certain range of
user desires and required behavior (such as picking up and maintaining
speed). And there is an objective -- improvement of air quality in
particular locations.

In addition, the authority to set and enforce standards is statutorily
given, and development and issuance of standards is done in an open
process (in North America and Western Europe of a certain period when
I used to work on such matters). There is considerable amount of data
collection and analysis, air basin modeling, science of air pollution
and public health. And consultations with the users and impacted
populations, any of whom can take the regulator to court on the
specific standard proposed or the way it is enforced. (I do have
lengthy experience in legal and legislative fights on such matters).

NONE of this obtains in the case of "international standards" for
"cookstoves in the developing world".

That the tests of diesel engines do not "relate closely to real use"
is an issue addressed long ago in the science of air pollution and
health, at least in the US. If I remember correctly, basically the
answer was, "When we do simulations, the projected emissions and
air-mixing patterns in the areas under consideration show that our
test basis is adequate." I don't remember the history on vehicular
emissions, except as the standards related to the overall
Non-Attainment of Air Quality Standards.

Which is another wrinkle -- diesel engine standards are NOT
promulgated independent of all other influences (including natural) on
air quality. WHO folks would have you believe that a fuel switchover
guarantees a particular,quantified level of indoor air quality
improvement, based on actual studies. (They obviously don't explicitly
ask you to believe that, but that is their intent.  Glibly marketing
deceit to gullible people is one way of promoting careers).

I do not impugn the motives of people involved; I have found no
evidence yet except that the process itself is evidently compromised,
possibly corrupt (but not so, since no law applies).

All I can say is that blind and lame people assessing an elephant
cannot diagnose what ails the elephant or prescribe proper cure
(unless they had been trained in elephant physiology by books).

The path to hell is littered with good intentions.

Why, even Crispin so religiously believes that efficiencies of free
fuel matter. No matter what the cost of an efficient stove.

What can an un-compromised bystander such as you can do? I suggest
asking for a database on service standards (cooking practices and
seasonal, locational variations), and then asking for the evidence
that the performance metrics so fervently pursued by all are based on
any theory with an evidentiary base. (Not the WHO attributability of
premature deaths.)

Nikhil


> On Dec 7, 2017, at 12:06 PM, Andrew Heggie <aj.heggie at gmail.com<mailto:aj.heggie at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> On 7 December 2017 at 02:54, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
> <crispinpigott at outlook.com<mailto:crispinpigott at outlook.com>> wrote:
>
>> The protocol used to test NO emissions in diesels was 'gamed' rather easily. Adopting a protocol that is difficult to game would be a better option.
>
> It's an interesting concept in itself; that countries stipulate a
> standard for engines to reach before they can be sold into a highly
> sophisticated market with high standards for testing and:
>
> 1: a major player can distort the tests
>
> 2: the tests don't relate closely to real use anyway
>
> I haven't bought a new car so it hasn't affected my choice, so why
> should a stove tested to any standard affect a consumer?
>
> Andrew
>

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