[Stoves] Woodgas stove proposal for Haiti (Paul Anderson)

[Traveller]

Paul:

This is in response to your post of 18th February (below) .

I had earlier posted on Haiti cookstoves work - 14 October 201 and 3 Jan
this year, plus some answers to you and Ron regarding the LPG Webinar some
months ago. Now on GACC work in Haiti.

GACC sees a crisis in Haiti. Its How to Address Haiti’s Cooking Crisis?
<http://cleancookstoves.org/about/news/06-21-2016-how-to-address-haiti-s-cooking-crisis.html>
21
June 2016 - says, " The health effects of cooking-related household air
pollution (HAP) are dire – use of solid fuel for cooking is the 3rd
greatest risk factor for mortality in the country and dependence on biomass
has depleted Haiti’s forest cover."

There is zero evidentiary basis for this assertion.

I do not yet know a national GBD report for Haiti; besides, a "risk factor"
is a matter of attribution and GBD is for cohorts already dead. Groupthink
galore, the glib shack up with the gullible.

As for "depleted forest cover" - it happened decades ago, and the question
is not that it was lost but why it hasn't been replaced. Charcoal prices
are just not high enough for investing in to modernizing the biomass supply
chain. I suspect upgrading of charcoal business would lower the production
cost and with competition (and regulatory controls) charcoal prices could
go down in real terms.

Indeed, just a few days ago there was an AP Big Story: Pervasive charcoal
trade getting a major rethink in Hait
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6035db6b1de440628cb2821abafa1ec4/pervasive-charcoal-trade-getting-major-rethink-haiti>i,
claiming "a growing body of research suggesting much of the blame for
Haiti's deforestation lies elsewhere — and that a regulated use of
wood-based charcoal might be able to provide livelihoods without decimating
mangroves and other remaining natural forests."

Just this past August, the filmmakers of Death by a Thousand Cuts: Charcoal
and Deforestation Threaten Hispaniola
<http://cleancookstoves.org/about/news/08-23-2016-death-by-a-thousand-cuts-charcoal-and-deforestation-threaten-hispaniola.html>
 said,

"While it is still not too late to save important habitats across the
island, it will require a long-term, comprehensive approach be put in
place. As long as the demand for charcoal is so vast and the poverty of
rural populations on both sides of the island so pervasive, stricter
enforcement of forestry laws and “ecological” charcoal substitutes alone
are not enough to address the escalating deforestation."

Will regulated charcoal-making encourage dedicated plantations (as has
happened in this Indian state I am currently sitting in) and reduce
premature mortality from HAP? Maybe not; the models go straight from
assumed fuel quantities via assumed emission factors to assumed exposures
to Burden of Disease.

***********
Anyway, about GACC's work under Canadian assistance:

GACC says on its role in Haiti
<http://cleancookstoves.org/resources/476.html> is " to design a
comprehensive, costed national five-year integrated clean cooking program
in Haiti."

Reminds me of an ESMAP report in 2007 - Haiti: Strategy to Alleviate the
Pressure of Fuel Demand on National Woodfuel Resources
<http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/176391468257719108/pdf/402390HT0ENGLI1rces111210701PUBLIC1.pdf>
.

But GACC wants a "Clean Cooking Action Plan", designed with money from
Global Affairs Canada and which it hopes to implement with more money

In partnership with the Government of Canada, the Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves (Alliance) will leverage its diverse partner base and extensive
experience building clean cooking markets in developing countries to design *a
comprehensive, costed national five-year integrated clean cooking program
in Haiti*. Toward this goal, the Alliance will work with key government
ministries, in-country partners, influential Haitian stakeholders, local
champions, donors, manufacturers, non-governmental organizations, women's
groups, investors and other counterparts. *Global Affairs Canada has
indicated a strong interest in supporting implementation of the plan upon
completion of the program*.

WHAT ARE THE ANTICIPATED GOALS OF THE CLEAN COOKING ACTION PLAN? The
program is expected to lead to a broad range of environmental, health,
economic, and women’s empowerment benefits across Haiti. The specific goals
of this program will focus on *delivering measureable environmental
benefits, including reduction in deforestation caused by tree harvesting
for charcoal production, lessened land degradation, flooding, and erosion,
reduced depletion of watershed and biodiversity, and lower emissions of
greenhouse gases and short-lived climate pollutants. In addition, black
carbon and other short-lived climate pollutants emitted from the combustion
of wood and charcoal in traditional stoves are a potent climate forcer, and
thus the substitution of clean fuels is expected to result in a net climate
benefit*. The application of robust stove standards and testing protocols
is expected to shift the market to better cooking technologies and cleaner
fuels, which will reduce black carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions.
Implementation of the plan is also expected to deliver measureable health
benefits including reductions in chronic and acute illness. The plan is
expected to increase women’s empowerment through r*eductions in the
drudgery of fuel collection and exposure to gender-based violence and
physical strain from carrying fuel*, and will improve livelihoods through
lower expenditures for solid fuel for cooking and the resultant health care
from associated illnesses


GACC has issued TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR FIELD STUDIES TO PROVIDE BLACK AND
ORGANIC CARBON EMISSIONS PERFORMANCE METRICS OF STOVE/FUELCOMBINATIONS
DURING NORMAL USAGE IN HOMES
<https://cleancookstoves.org/binary-data/DOCUMENT/file/000/000/415-1.pdf>
 2015

"The Alliance believes that building a strong evidence base is critical to
adoption of clean cookstoves and fuels at scale. As part of this effort,
the Alliance will be supporting efforts to better determine

*black carbon emissions from a range of cookstoves and fuels in key
geographic regions. These efforts will help us better quantify the climate
benefits of scaling up cleaner, more efficient cooking."*This is a grand
ideal.

Incomplete combustion of solid biomass - there is no coal in Haiti -
co-emits black carbon as well as organic carbon. In a July 2010 Yale blog Black
Carbon's Grey Areas
<http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/07/black-carbons-grey-areas/>,
Tami Bond is quoted


""Any action to reduce black carbon will also affect any co-emitted
pollutants from the same source. *Any emission source produces warming
pollutants (black carbon and some gases) and cooling pollutants (sulfates
and organic carbon*), and the result is like mixing hot and cold water in a
faucet. The mixed water can be very warm, very cold, or in between
depending on the amount of each flow. *Sources with high emissions of
warming pollutants are the most promising targets for reducing black carbon
warming*."

Moreover, black carbon itself is hardly uniform, an important point often
missing in media reports. Bond estimates, for instance, that the particles
can vary in size from 0.038–0.32 μm from diesel vehicles and *from 0.1–1.3
μm from cook-stoves, and these order-of-magnitude differences may have
substantial implications for how black carbon works in the climate*."

I am skeptical of identifying "the most promising targets for reducing
black carbon warming" by one-time studies of emissions "from a range of
cookstoves and fuels in key geographic areas". The more relevant question
is, how much reduction in climate pollutants from Haiti cookstoves -- and
charcoal kilns -- will contribute to Global Mean Surface Temperature in
2050? I am guessing 0.0001 K.  Or maybe GACC will take the BC and OC
fractions from Haiti samples and apply to the whole world.

******
Then there are some efforts to commercialize ethanol for cooking; see
http://www.ppafoundation.org/clean-cookstoves-and-fuels.html


Nikhil



> -------- Original message --------
> From: Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu>
> Date: 2017-02-08 4:36 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: Stoves and biofuels network <Stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>, >
biochar at yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Fwd: Woodgas stove proposal for Haiti --- follows from: Fwd:
> Update on the Alliance's work in Haiti
>
> Dear all,
>
> Below is my correspondence with the GACC leadership about stoves
in Haiti, plus two attachments of interest.
>
> I have hopes that the quite clean gas-burning TLUD woodgas stoves have an
opportunity to be included in the forthcoming plans and efforts in Haiti.
Please forward this message to anyone who might be able to assist.
>
> Paul
>
> Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
> Email:psanders at ilstu.edu
> Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072 <(309)%20452-7072>
> Website:www.drtlud.com
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202-568-5831 <(202)%20568-5831>
*Skype: nikhildesai888*
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