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

tmiles at trmiles.com tmiles at trmiles.com
Wed Dec 20 18:17:21 CST 2017


Nikhil,

 

We look forward to seeing you in Seattle for the ETHOS meeting. You can bring these issues with you and talk to the appropriate organizations who are usually represented. They were all asking about you last year. You can also talk with the non-US funders of stoves to understand how they have made their decisions about funding stoves projects and how they the various screening methods. 

http://www.ethoscon.com/2018-registration/

 

Tom

 

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Nikhil Desai
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2017 7:08 AM
To: Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com>
Cc: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com>; Discussion of biomass <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] "Those of us who believe that the WBT is critical to stove improvement"

 

Xavier: 

Yes, I take the word "harm" in strict legal sense. When public funds are being spent, they are presumed to be in the public interest, howsoever rationalized. However, in the US, governments cannot do anything they wish; they have to have a legal authority and rationale for it (usually comes in budget requests). When USAID used WBT, it had such an authority. USEPA too had this authority when it financed stove testing back in 2011 and still has that authority - discretionary as it is - in using WBT at its test facilities in the US. 

What the EPA does not have is an authority to set performance standards for cookstoves in the developing countries. Of course it knows that, so it is using GACC and ANSI to do that, promotion of an imperialist regulatory ideology which is only an excuse to spend money. (Mrs. Clinton was constrained in how much she could commit from State to GACC; USAID seems unwilling to get in this business, but Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy came to help in committing EPA funds. More came from HHS.) 

The key question is, did the EPA, in its contract with UNF, require GACC to in turn require the use of WBT and associated equipment and procedures? If so, that is possibly an abuse of its discretionary authority, not a case of unauthorized action. It's all being done in secret, which problem may be resolved by filing FOIA request or simply calling up EPA, which I have refrained from doing so far. (Generally, Federal bureaucrats are extremely helpful and open. I criticize the EPA because, hey, it's there. Criticism is a part of public scrutiny, which is compounded by skepticism of government; it is a core American principle and routine business of Washington, where I have spent decades, including a decade on EPA regulatory matters.) 

If legal redress is not available, raising hell can be an effective strategy. Especially those who live by reputation among deemed peers, peer pressure is a good means. 

In other words, just what you have been doing and I respect and support that. 

Let me explain the apparent contradiction. I do speak from both sides of my mouth because I can hold two contradictory thoughts in my mind at the same time. Here, though, there is a distinction between what I regard as an irrelevant metric - woodfuel efficiency - except in specific context, relative to other options, on the one hand, and a lab test protocol, on the other. 

In your June 24 e-mail - thank you for reminding me - the most important words were "helped me understand better." 

You see, 18th Century thermodynamics and 20th Century scare of "woodfuel crisis" are no good for "understanding". The generation before you has been maniacal about technical efficiencies. Us economics and law types have argued that total costs matter, and even then consumer preferences do not translate into costs and benefits. We have also challenged the theology of biomass as "renewable energy", pointing out that unlike sunlight, it takes real resources (land, water, labor) with real opportunity costs (alternative uses) to produce biomass energy and in some cases the delivered cost of usable solid biomass (say, charcoal) makes other alternatives attractive. 

But bad ideas stay long because vested interests are involved. Hopefully, the 21st Century project designers focus on marketing to the users, not rich-country bureaucrats and ideologues. Promotion of WBT is arguably a hindrance to them, not because it gives unreliable, irreproducible results for efficiency - Ron here says this is not the case - but that it is a silly test to begin with. Besides, other tests have been found to be better at "understanding" stove use. 

Pursuit of red herrings is an excuse for raising funds, bureaucratic budgeting and career promotion, and spending that money. 

It is also that same generation before you that innovated and created CCT, KPT, when the object was to please the customer, not blow smoke about saving forests, climate, health by stoves alone. 

I remember the USAID project - was it Uganda? In what sense did it fail - because WBT gave false hopes of fuel savings or because the stove wasn't usable? 

Please post a list of some of the people who care. Put my name and Fernando Manibog; in 1983, Fernando calmly pointed out the limitations of different stove protocols including WBT. I was his research assistant, and I chose to be rather aggressive among my friends. Like here. 

Yes, "We have to thrive for science, we have to thrive for truth, even if we don’t know yet the impact of lies. I’m sure we’ll know soon enough anyways."

As Cecil says, in peace and service, 

Nikhil

 

 

 

On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 6:29 PM, Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com <mailto:xvr.brandao at gmail.com> > wrote:

Dear Nikhil,

 

You may have a very nihilistic point of view, or one which is really within the bounds of the law.

 

« If there is no harm alleged, who would bother? »

Those who think there is no place for junk science, even the harmless one. And the WBT is not harmless, see below, even if there are until now only a few allegations.

I believe Crispin told you well why he bothers. You could ask also the scientists who bothered reviewing the WBT and finding it questionable? Or the other people, mostly practitioners, who care. I’ll soon post a list of some of the people who care.

Their stoves have to be tested, so they made it one of their problems.

There are many people who care about having testing protocols with reliable results.

 

« Where did you ever see a piece of regulation that says cookstove testing protocol has to give reliable results? »

Nowhere, only common sense told me so. Humanity didn’t wait for pieces of regulation to do what they thought was right.

 

You say the cookstove testing and the WBT custodianship is in a legal vaccum. It is in a grey area. Hence it doesn’t really exist, doesn’t really matter, no one does and should really care.

I am interested about and find important the legal aspects of it, but not quite as much as the impact it can have on development.

 

You know Nikhil, the problem is not that the WBT exists. If it was somewhere lost in the EPA archives, or somewhere on a shelf, it wouldn’t matter that much.

What matters is that the WBT is being promoted and taught, as the main cookstove testing protocol.

 

I don’t care about the WBT, I actually care about reliable protocols being pushed aside by the WBT.

I care that practitioners are being influenced to keep using the WBT, instead of better alternatives. The problem is the WBT replacing something better, the problem is opportunity cost.

Practitioners have the right to be given reliable tools to test their stoves. No one has the right to fiddle with their testing.

« There’s a loophole in the emission testing system of Volkswagen. It allows cheating. But, you say we have no way to clearly know how emissions are harmful to the population. So, we shouldn’t care if the engine is clean or not, and if the test is unreliable or not, because we don’t know the effects of emissions on health anyways. So should we change the system or not? Should we ask Volkswagen to use a testing system that is reliable?

*** The comparison is invalid. There is a legally established authority for setting emission standards for auto vehicles in the context of legally set standards for ambient air quality. I have repeatedly told  you that what goes on in the name of "clean cookstoves" has no legal authority nor a theory of improving household air quality. There are no baseline data - other than spotty measurements collected in the WHO database of studies - for household air quality anywhere in the world. What WHO did is simply slap on assumed concentrations by age (up to 5 and 25+) and sex to all people supposed to be using solid fuels for cooking (which too is another model estimate with no data on quantity and quality of fuels consumed or emission rates). You don't want to acknowledge that all this is a charade, only to satisfy people engaged in it and snowed by it so they can keep publishing papers and making speeches to raise money. Including from Gates Foundation and HHS. I have yet to see any argument that suggests to me that I am on the wrong track here. *** »

So you basically say: that wouldn’t happen anyways, because there is a law that make sure automobile manufacturers respect the emission testing procedures.

Sure, but besides the legal aspects? What if the automobile standards for ambient air quality were voluntary? Maybe someone at Volkswagen, maybe an individual whistle blower would ask to change that system. Would that make sense if he/she did it?

My simple question with that metaphor is a philosophical one: « Should we correct something that we know is wrong, even if we have little to no idea of its potential consequences? »

Is the mere fact the thing is wrong (we know for sure it is wrong) enough for us to take action?

I am convinced of the answer: yes it is, we cannot leave it. We have to thrive for science, we have to thrive for truth, even if we don’t know yet the impact of lies. I’m sure we’ll know soon enough anyways.

 

« You, sir, are taking the drama as if it were a real life event. No, it is not. »

Yes, it is real. I believe we had this discussion before, and that I already said the following.

While you are having legal considerations, the earth keep spinning, and stakeholders are acting according to their own will, they are leaving an impact, in this legal vaccum. Projects are happening, stoves are being developed, for better or worse.

 

« Who cares and why? I have yet to see anybody in the manufactured stove distribution business to claim that s/he relied on WBT to design and sell his/her stove. »

Maybe not totally relied on it, but that it had an important influence on the development of the stove. See what Kirk Harris wrote. I believe he should be concerned.

 

« How do you measure the impact of the unreliability of the WBT? Do you have a methodology?

 *** Why should I care? »

Exactly. I don’t care either. I don’t have to measure the impact. Something unreliable has to give in.

 

« No personal offense intended and I hope you don't take any. »

None taken! We’re here to confront points of view.

 

And as Crispin said, there is an impact.

As I told you Nikhil in my email of the 24/06 :

« I have been struggling for weeks in Benin, back in 2011, performing WBT with different designs of charcoal stoves, the ones from my workshop, as well as traditional or improved ones. CCTs helped me understand better, and eventually I did some sort of KPT, I left stoves at neighbours houses for days, which gave me much more usable data. It was the same with the institutional stoves.

At Prakti, we were also having difficulties with WBT testing, back in 2013 and when working on a charcoal model. We started to focus more on wood and multi fuel stoves and Jiddu and the research team increasingly implemented the HTP in the lab. It helped a lot. 

Vahid and Camilla mentioned how the WBT tests made their work at ILF and Prime Stove difficult.

Crispin mentioned this USaid project in 2007-2008 which was a big failure, largely because of initial incorrect Water Boiling Tests results. Crispin thinks because of this failure, the USaid was reluctant to conduct stove projects for a while. »

 

And Crispin said in yesterday’s email :

« Who was harmed by the WBT? The entire cooking stove industry. Every donor, every stove recipient. Through ignorance or design, the WBT has been impressed upon the stove programmes outside China and India. »

 

All reasons are now gathered to stop using the WBT.

There is no valid reason, none at all, to keep using it now.

 

Best,


Xavier

 


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