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

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

(I have made similar points in another thread; this was written earlier and
is repetitive in some places.)

I am inspired by your "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. "

This is one example of promising R&D you could propose in the C4D
discussion; I will start there too. A large menu of metrics, contextually
varied and (my preference) including subjective, qualitative measurements,
will help defining service standards and objectives from the viewpoint of
users. Just what I proposed in my piece on Modern Cooking five years ago
(which I may not defend any more; haven't re-read since I wrote it.)

But why hasn't this been done in the past? I think it is because of this
obsession with fuel efficiency and extraneous goals in the standard-setting
exercise.

First, my distinction between "heating stoves" and "cookstoves" is
shorthand for utilization factors for new capital investment, not ignoring
co-production (Tami asked that question about a year ago, about allocation
of efficiency). Cookstoves are also used for space heating in regions that
are not too cold (nighttime lows above freezing). What distinguishes
cookstoves is the versatility for different thermal tasks - frying,
grilling, baking, not just boiling water and simmering as testers and
certifiers wold have it.

Energy efficiency is an old quarrel between engineers/physicists and
economists/businessmen. I have seen it and been in it for at least 35
years. The verdict always is - it is the total cost of a desired service,
including the cost of equipment and operations, that make any investment in
energy efficiency worth while.

(The dirty secret of economics is: not all costs can be computed, nor all
benefits, in particular that elusive thing called "consumer preference" and
"appeal, aspiration". I can debate any cost benefit imputations as well.
Manufacturers of new vehicles, appliances, homes do their own cost/benefit
calculation from the viewpoint of sales forecasts,  market share, and
profit centers.)

>From stoves to entire homes, all vehicles, all electrical appliances, it is
generally the case that a) standards for higher efficiency, to be
effective, require R&D for new products that consumers have to invest in,
and b) generally, the higher the efficiency standard, the  higher the
investment cost and lower the rate of replacement or penetration in future
markets.

So what happens - say in the case of US - is that those who develop
standards of energy efficiency - USDOE - or maximum emission rates (hourly,
daily, annual) for new stationary and mobile sources - USEPA - have to a)
survey the actual landscape of regulated products in use, b) take into
account a diligently developed "implementation plan" for air quality in
specific areas and projections over a decade or two, c) consult with
appliance/vehicle manufacturers as to cost and time schedule for different
products so as to see how the NSPS will affect air quality over what
period. Then invite public comment, promulgate regulations, negotiate with
states for implementation, and be ready to face lawsuits and Congressional
scrutiny. (For USDOE, energy efficiency improvement is a policy goal in
itself, but the analytical and regulatory processes are similar).

No such process exists in what you and are debating here. In the present
circumstance, we have that same Empire Promotion Authority pushing for
standards of higher fuel efficiency. There is a chorus of engineers singing
the gospel of "fuel efficiency, fuel efficiency". To what end, I cannot
tell. I see no theory linking efficiency changes to any of the four evils
parroted by GACC - resource depletion, climate change, family health, and
sexual violence. No validity for the past, no validity for the future. The
object is not to solve any problem, even identify what the problem is, but
only to spend money and hold conferences, summits, forums, whatever.

Cults have their rituals. Why, when it comes to test protocols, the ISO DIS
19867-1 (or for that matter that sophomoric D-Lab report) have no estimate
of the total lifecycle costs of stoves/fuels from consumers' point of view.
But look at the Cambodia stove auction products; somehow the designers,
marketers have figured out how to win on the appeal of usability.

What do you or all of us collectively know, in a way that can be
documented, of these half a billion cooks who have prematurely died to date
from "dirty cooking" since the beginning of the industrial revolution? (I
am just making up a number like IHME makes up a number. Roughly average 2
million premature deaths from HAP per year over 267 years.)

To me, the implicit attitude - "They are all the same" -- is inherently
racist. I am sorry to say this, but Western academic fancies have ruled the
dialog on "stoves", especially the dialog on design and standards for
stove. It is also Western academics who have taught me of how the "material
conditions"of the poor differ - from coastal Odisha to Brazillian favellas
and supplement what I saw in Soweto or Port Vila or for that matter the
poor neighborhoods right here in the midst of opulence. If you are in the
business of selling stoves - not selling just papers and speeches where the
poor are reduced to statistics, you must have a  market characterization,
way finer than what GACC got from Dalberg and Andersen.

The rich are alike everywhere, the poor differ from place to place, even if
their per capita incomes or expenditures are said to be the same.

Let me give you another example - the narrative that "Stoves are not
replaced because women's lives are not valued. Because women don't make
economic decisions," and somehow alluring the aid industry that miracle
cookstoves will save women's lives

What rubbish.

Anybody who has an idea of the complexity and the depth of human
relationships - from their own experiences or novels and movies or from
reading sociology and anthropology of the poor, not just statistics, and
read newspapers - should realize that stereotypes limit understanding. All
over the world, I have seen poor people spend more over the years as their
incomes have increased and become more stable, buying things that consider
priority. It may be that when it comes to stoves, husbands and
fathers-in-law find investments in unfamiliar technologies; I doubt men as
fathers uniformly ignore, neglect, and punish girls.

When a woman who has spent much time with well-meaning surveyors, stove
marketers, researchers, of course she doesn't want to say that your product
is not worth the bother, so men of the family come handy excuses.

Sorry carricatures and outrageous stereotypes are marketed by rich people.
(What I just wrote is also a stereotype, but I haven't wasted loads of
money in third rate econometrics to derive co-efficients to fourth
significant digit.) Regressions are treated as progression by pundits.

There is no evidence that fuel efficiency of a solid fuel cookstove has a
significant, wide-spread, influence on changing the stove/fuel choices or
that promised efficiency gains have been realized. (Heating stoves are a
different matter and purchased wood or charcoal might be exceptions.)
Buyers may already have discounted promises of fuel savings. and other
factors - smoke, time to cook - may be more important.

You recognize as much - "time to boil". Do we know what the baseline is,
around the world and for different types of stove/fuel combinations? Do we
know how that baseline has changed and is likely to change in the near
future?

Why theorize without a theory of cooking behavior, not just stove adoption?
My tentative hypothesis - again, spotty observations, even asking customer
service phone reps from US to UK to India and the Philippines - is that
younger women in the BOP populations are on average spending less time
cooking, relegating it to older women or children (under 16) at home or
hired help, and simply buying more pre-cooked food ingredients and even
meals. The premium on cook's time has thus increased, in part because of
greater labor force participation by women.

But the cognoscenti at IWA - including yourself - did not see it proper to
put "time to cook" as a performance metric. All other performance metrics
were also without a baseline - except for three-stone-fire efficiencies and
emission rates cooked up by WBT vested interests.

Why bother with facts when theories and protocols are so dopey, one can
develop a life-long dependence and get paid for it??

Or take fuel-flexibility. I heard at a Winrock/EPA webinar a few days ago
that there is only one experiment to date for varying fuels with a
particular stove to measure emission rates (probably efficiencies too). ALL
other stove testing in labs is done with just one standard fuel, it seems.
There are a lot of data points for three-stone fire and different varieties
of solid fuels, but none for an actual stove barring this one.

Why? Why this maniacal attachment to 3SF as the baseline and standarized
fuel for lab testing of efficiencies and emission rates, while ignoring
time to cook and fuel flexibility?

The sad answer, I submit, is that for 40 years we have been distracted by
all sorts of red herrings while ignoring cooking - the cook and the foods.
(Small-scale local projects are often exceptions to this rule.) Teaching
dogma to younger generation is not exactly a new modus operandi for
pundits.

Nikhil



On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 10:50 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 7:09 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> 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
>>
>>
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