[Stoves] Biomass power, cookstoves, and disruptive technologies

Mon Jan 9 10:50:31 CST 2017

An interesting article on woodfuel (and stoves) I was reading today you
might find agrees at least with you on the need for disruptions, which may
even be as simple as the political will being found to firstly regulate and
tame the charcoal and woodfuel industries in Africa at least.

''''Sola and colleagues’ research has underscored that the usage of wood
fuel is just one of many interrelated drivers causing environmental damage.

In fact, there are suggestions that agricultural expansion is a much bigger
factor, although intricately associated with the subsequent sale of wood
fuel resultant thereof, “We’re saying that the studies that have been
published so far have not been adequate to inform policy,” she said.

“You find that most of the papers are either looking at the environmental
factors and making broad conclusions from that, or the health factors where
wood fuel is causing lots of respiratory disorders, and then there are
those who are focusing on the economic aspects. But you don’t have studies
that try to look at all of these issues together and, most importantly, at
the trade-offs among them.”
<https://www.facebook.com/EastAfricanBiomassEnergyPortal/posts/1703667213295793>

“And that is what is required — so we are recommending broader and more
robust research that actually takes all of these issues into account
simultaneously. Equally important is the reliability of evidence generated
– robust research that improves attribution of changes to wood fuel use.''

Best,

Teddy

*Cookswell Jikos*
www.cookswell.co.ke
www.facebook.com/CookswellJikos
www.kenyacharcoal.blogspot.com
Mobile: +254 700 380 009
Mobile: +254 700 905 913
P.O. Box 1433, Nairobi 00606, Kenya

Save trees - think twice before printing.

On Mon, Jan 9, 2017 at 7:42 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Roger:
>
> I too dabbled with biomass power in US. Your throwing in the towel means
> you have learnt the hazards of technological promises - biomass stoves for
> poor households or biomass power in California. (I just brought that up
> because I did some research on California biopower some 25 years ago.)
>
> For what it's worth, I took the view in 2010 that i) pico-PV battery
> charging should solve the "first light in darkness" and connectivity
> problems for the world's poor in five years, and ii) over the subsequent
> five years, PV with induction stoves and "smart' demand/battery management
> should solve the problem of small-scale cooking. I also started arguing
> that grid PV was the panacea for India and nuclear in India should be given
> a peaceful death by injection of reality. By early 2014 I wrote a fantasy
> piece about distributed generation and storage with fancy smart grids.
> Within six months I realized I was the fool -- what I thought was 20 years
> ahead was only five years ahead.
>
> I am not a technology optimist any more.
>
> But wish you the best with grasses. Where there is water, there is a way.
> (Grasses produced in Montana are being exported to China for cattle feed,
> so US can re-import processed grass. I mean dry milk powder. That is a
> pretty example of world biomass balances, isn't it?)
>
> *****
> Now to stoves.
>
> If the Global Alliance of Confident Cons is sure that all it has to do
> after 2020 - by when some 100 million "clean stoves and fuels" have been
> distributed - is that its first 10 years of extravagant expenditures have
> produced some extraordinary results in avoided DALYs, increments in women's
> power, gains in the fight against global warming, et cetera and over the
> subsequent 10 years, cookouts in front of Canadian, Indian, Nigerian, South
> African parliaments using ISO certified, Gold Standard approved biomass
> stoves would multiply these gains several fold --------- it is smoking an
> illegal substance and getting others stoned as well.
>
> From what I see around in some parts of the developing world over the past
> 10-15 years, "urban cooking" has gone "wholesale" outdoors. That is, some
> 20-40% of the cooking services for meals consumed is outside the home -
> either at institutional and commercial meals or via food products.
>
> I will say this again in another post, but let me say it here too, quoting
> myself from some 10+ years ago - "Maggis noodles saved more trees than all
> the "improved woodstoves" projects put together."
>
> While solar PV induction cooking and solar thermal pre-cooking and
> water-heating might take even 50% of this "outsourced cooking" market, I
> think gas, LPG and grid electricity - and biomass stoves - will remain
> viable for 40 years if not more. The "outsourced cooking" market will grow
> several fold.
>
> As Anil Rajvanshi said, "Working poor do not have the luxury of cooking
> three meals a day."
>
> Unless biomass or coal stoves are "usable" and used well enough to satisfy
> the users, it doesn't matter who supports them and how many megaliters of
> water are used to test them. The water vapor turns into intellectual toke.
>
> The great thing about PV induction stove is that it wouldn't have to go
> through this IWA song-and-dance about promising IAQ nirvana.
>
> ****
> Now about WEF report:
>
> It reminds me of a World Bank report around 1996 or 1997 on renewable
> energy - Dennis Anderson and Kulsum Ahmed were the authors. The cover had
> pictures of windmills, solar panels, and if I am not mistaken the Solar One
> (thermal) project.
>
> One day I was sitting with a solar PV businessman with that report. I was
> skeptical of it, but it turned out he was super-skeptical (confidentially,
> of course) as he heard me out and endorsed everything I had said. He
> pointed to those pictures and said, "This one has closed, this one is
> bankrupt, this one has closed.. "
>
> Yes. I have been a reviewer of such reports (not WEF) since around 2004/5.
> Everything can speed up if finance is available at risk-adjusted rate of
> 4-5% plus some subsidies. Anything to avoid nuclear; coal and gas are
> bridge fuels. (I was at MIT during the WOCOL study in late 1970s - Coal: A
> Bridge to the Future. Back then the IIASA types were sure the future was
> nuclear breeders, so much so that they were projecting separating uranium
> from ocean waters.)
>
> The current world capacity for grid power generation is a little over 1
> million MW. USDOE/EIA projects that by 2040, some 100 GW of coal capacity
> will be retired and 200 GW of renewables will be added, which balances out.
>
> I keep my fingers crossed. The revolution is being televised. Disruptive
> technologies come in. For the markets we are supposedly interested in,
> Crispin's coal heating stoves are a disruptive technology.
>
> Nikhil
>
> * PS: You read the Wired piece Ron sent us? Wasn't too rosy about India's
> first solar park. I think Bill Clinton and his Foundation had something to
> do with it; now I don't remember.  As for the Niti Ayog piece about
> electric cooking, I think one of the authors is clueless about cooking when
> he talks about gas and electric cookstoves he had in the US. We are not
> talking about those ranges any more, but about induction cooking. (See Kirk
> Smith's Power to the People.) *
>
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 7:34 PM, Roger Samson <rogerenroute at yahoo.ca>
> wrote:
>
>> Nikhil
>>
>> I think India is on the right track looking at renewable electricity as
>> the long term clean fuel source winner for cooking. I used to work on
>> biomass power in North America. I threw in the towel on that a few years
>> ago.  I have been following solar energy research as a means  to better
>> understand how plants can more efficiently intercept sunlight for my
>> biomass grass plant breeding program. The solar PV researchers are making
>> most of their efficiency gains through texturing and coatings to improve
>> sunlight utilization (In my biomass grasses I breed for striated leaves and
>> glaucous bloom-the dusty blue texturing you see on cabbage leaves). The
>> cheapest solar projects today are 2.5 cents a kwh today. In ten years it is
>> projected to head to 1 cent kwh and that will destroy oil (and gas).  Solar
>> PV modules are continuing to drop fast from an average selling price of 70
>> cents per watt in 2013 to 35 cents at the beginning of  2017
>> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/energy-ts
>> unamis-threaten-to-drag-oil-down-to-10-engie-says
>>
>> Look at the efficiency chart here on solar and then look at the amazing
>> cost reduction chart.
>> http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Renewable_Infrastructure_In
>> vestment_Handbook.pdf
>>
>> So urban cooking in my opinion will most likely go electric within 10
>> years and the Indian government is making a good call on that. I think it
>> will be much longer for rural users to go electric and it will remain
>> biomass likely for the next 25 years.
>>
>> I think any agency deciding to get in bed with the hole digging
>> extractives industry (ie LPG) this late in the game is making a bad call
>> and are completely visionless. There is no future in the extractives
>> industry. PV solar is about to do to the energy sector what agriculture did
>> to the hunter gatherer food movement and those in the fossil fuel sector
>> are going to get crushed (especially Canadian oilsands).
>>
>> regards
>> Roger
>> https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roger_Samson2
>> (you can see my grass breeding work here)
>>
>
>
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