[Stoves] LPG India update and comments--- Fwd: [stove and climate] Timely op-ed
Paul Anderson
psanders at ilstu.edu
Fri Feb 17 20:31:36 CST 2017
Dear Stovers,
I received the message below because I am subscribed to the Google
Groups "stove at lists.berkeley.edu" group. I thank Kirk Smith for
providing this.
A few key points:
1. India on track for 50 million LPG stoves for BOP (base of pyramid)
households by 2019. (Previously reported cost to be US$1 billion.)
2.
> Discussions are on to double the target for early next decade. This
> would mean a remarkable enhancement of clean kitchens for hundreds of
> millions of people.
That would probably be another billion dollars of government subsidy.
That would be a total of 100 Million LPG stoves for the BOP population,
which the article notes to be about 200 million households burning solid
fuels. Therefore, with full success the LPG efforts could accomplish
half of the need. What about the other half? (My answer is TLUD
woodgas stoves (gas burners that make there gases from dry biomass,
analogous to biogas stoves with gas from wet biomass).)
3. From "chit chat" messages from India, I have heard
A. of LPG stoves not being used because of distance to get a refill of
the tank (and of course the gas is not free).
B. people with the subsidized tank-refills selling them for a profit to
restaurants that would pay substantially more to refill their tanks at
the commercial level. (and possible kick-backs to the people who are
hired to prevent such dealings.) That is only hearsay from a couple of
sources, so do not quote it as proven. Illegal actions are difficult
to document, for obvious reasons.).
4. I do not know how much LPG India has and can continually produce for
how many years. Any data would be apprreciated. Might be abundant, and
might actually help the most accessable half of India's BOP households.
But LPG is a limited fossil-fuel resource that does contribute to
atmospheric CO2 increase. In contrast the TLUD woodgas stoves (gas
burners, not stick burners) use renewable fuels and can even become
carbon-negative when charcoal is collected and buried as biochar. And
at a fraction of the billions of dollars that are going to the LPG industry.
REQUEST: Can anyone help get this message to any decision makers in
India? I would like to have a fair hearing about this (about the TLUD
woodgas stoves, not about the LPG aspects, for which the LPG lobby
already has its support lined up.)
Paul
-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: [stove and climate] Timely op-ed
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2017 06:17:04 -0800
From:
To:
0p-ed in Indian Express, one of India’s national newspapers, Feb 17, 2017
This proposed program, Ujjwala-Mamta, meaning bright motherhood, is
proposed to be a follow on or supplement to the highly successful
Pradham Mantri Ujjwala Yojana program started last May, which has
already provided LPG connections to 17 million poor households and is on
track to achieve a goal of 50 million by 2019. This on top of the 12.5
million from the Give it Up campaign from the year before. Now we
need to find ways to focus on enhancing usage among the most vulnerable,
such as pregnant women./k
*The pollution in the house*
Petroleum and health ministries need to push access to LPG, promote its use.
Written by *Kirk R. Smith*
<http://indianexpress.com/profile/columnist/kirk-r-smith/> and *Ambuj D.
Sagar* <http://indianexpress.com/profile/columnist/ambuj-d-sagar/> ,
Indian Express, Feb 17, 2017
LPG, LPG use, LPG usage, air pollution, pollution, cooking gas, cooking
fuel, cooking pollution, ministry of petroleum and natural gas, LPG
connection, JSSK programme, reduce pollution, indian express news, india
news, indian express opinion
An LPG connection is a necessary first step, but there is need to ensure
usage as well.
Air pollution kills more Indians than any other risk factor with
estimates ranging from 15 to 20 lakh premature deaths annually. Although
outdoor air pollution garners most public attention, it is well-known in
health circles that pollution from chulhas is about half of the problem
because people in households are directly exposed to such pollution. It
is less well-understood, however, that the two are linked: One of the
reasons India has such bad outdoor air pollution is that nearly 200
million households are still burning biomass every day for cooking.
Solving the household dirty fuel problem will also help reduce the
outdoor air problem, although not solve it on its own.
Although reducing outdoor air pollution remains difficult for Indian
policymakers given the multiplicity of sources involved, the country is
making major strides in addressing household air pollution. First with
the Give it Up scheme and now with the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana
(PMUY) programme, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) has
targeted 5 crore BPL households to be connected to LPG by 2019, a
massive increase in the rate of uptake by historical and global
standards. Discussions are on to double the target for early next
decade. This would mean a remarkable enhancement of clean kitchens for
hundreds of millions of people. But accomplishing the project will
involve major challenges.
An LPG connection is a necessary first step, but there is need to ensure
usage as well. An LPG connection alone does not help health much if the
cylinder and stove sit unused in a corner, and are used occasionally for
making tea. A near-full transition to LPG as the main cookfuel is needed
to stop the household and ambient pollution from traditional biomass
use. Although experience from all over the world shows that gas is a
superior and aspirational fuel and that households can reasonably be
expected to eventually shift to using it, there has not been much
experience in creating the incentives for poor households to move
quickly through the transition. Cost is certainly an issue, but for
hundreds of millions in India, other issues are also important, such as
reliable and rapid access to refills, clear messaging around health, and
changes in community expectations.
The health sector has long dealt with these issues. It does no good just
to give people access to latrines, condoms, birth facilities, and
vaccines, if no one uses them. As with LPG, access is essential, but
that is just the beginning to secure health benefits. Thus, in the next
stages of the LPG programme there would be real advantage if the two
sectors, petroleum and health, were to work together to make sure LPG
makes its full contribution of health — the former to provide access and
the latter to help ensure usage.
One arena with which India’s health sector has good experience is
conditional cash transfer (CCT) or the provision of cash incentives for
specific behaviours that promote health in vulnerable groups — one such
project is the Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK) programme among poor
pregnant women. It has recently been expanded under the Pregnancy Aid
Yojana scheme to provide a minimum of Rs 6,000 in incentives for healthy
practices during pregnancy in poor households. There are risks with this
approach, of course, but it works well if the funds are reserved for
producing highly-effective behavioural changes that do not result in
long-term financial commitments and, importantly, are transferred
directly to the women’s bank accounts where they are most likely to be
used for the benefit of the household.
There is a parallel opportunity for LPG use — to initiate a
sub-programme of the PMUY that focuses on providing not only LPG
connections but refills during pregnancy to all biomass-using
households. The impact on birth weight and other adverse birth outcomes
for a pregnant woman using biomass has been established in several
studies in India; a recent study in Africa shows reduction in
hypertension in pregnancy with clean fuel use. Thus the Rs 1,800 or so
that the LPG would cost during a pregnancy to maximise the reduction in
biomass smoke looks to be well worth the cost for the country. The
project could be supported by the ugraded JSSK programme.
Such a joint effort between MoPNG and the Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare (MoHFW) to promote the health and well-being of poor pregnant
women — and by extension, their newborn children — could serve as a
model for future collaborative efforts that might be undertaken by the
MoHFW to address other pressing sources of air pollution. Such
innovative partnerships are required to address India’s complex
development challenges.
Smith is professor of global environmental health at the University of
California, Berkeley and Sagar is Vipula and Mahesh Chaturvedi Professor
of Policy Studies at IIT Delhi
-----------------------------------------------------------
Kirk R. Smith, MPH, PhD <krksmith at berkeley.edu
<mailto:krksmith at berkeley.edu>>
Professor of Global Environmental Heath
Chair, Graduate Group in Environmental Health Sciences
Director, Global Health and Environment Program
School of Public Health
747 University Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-7360
510-643-0793 (fax: 642-5810)
http://www.kirkrsmith.org/
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