[Stoves] Domestic stoves, air pollution and health ==> Back to basics

[Traveller]

Dear Cecil:

Thank you. Ethnographic methods are slowly coming into analyses of US
electoral behavior, and GACC may be interested in research on how political
fuels burn, cleanly or otherwise.

I have seen how external technical advisors can work with "indigenous
fabricators" to arrive at "disruptive cooking technologies" -- charcoal
stoves and Mirt mtads in Addis Ababa 1992-94.

If I may paraphrase you, I think I would use the title of the World Bank
presentation on Indonesia cookstoves study that you helped with -
"Contextual Design and Promotion of Clean Biomass Stoves".

Not just cookstoves, all industrial product design and promotion is
"contextual", even though some fail.

The context defines the cultural dimension -- not just foods but also other
household and social practices. These cultural dimensions need not be taken
as permanent; indeed, the successful designer is one who figures out where
the status quo can be given a nudge or two and the system disrupted, taken
to another tentative equilibrium.

***
That said, not all stoves are cultural constructs and tools, household
cookstoves the most so, and dual-purpose or heating stoves less so. Beyond
that - i.e., in commercial and large-scale cooking (which is what kitchens
did in palaces and estates for centuries) - much less so.

And for liquid and gaseous fuels, even household stoves are not that
culturally specific in design, just in use patterns. The Swedish Primus
kerosene stove has been around for over a century and adopted worldwide; I
think I even saw a Primus LPG burner in Port Vila, Vanuatu ten years ago.

But food is always the paramount cultural construct. Even when it is
machine-processed and delivered Campbell's Soup or a paper bowl of ramen
noodles.

Unlike 50 years ago, the "stove experience" for "cooking" is now quite
narrow - variety of devices and foods - except at the very top - who have
the luxury to cook (not Hillary who says she is a lousy cook) or hire a
cook AND can afford a wide variety of primary foods.

The "poorest" - those who suffer food, water, and shelter insecurities the
worst - have little or no experience of the variety of stoves, different
functionalities, leave alone foods. There is no "particular baseline
traditional stove" and there is indeed no baseline nutrition nor much asset
base - financial, physical or human capital. If at all, as David Stein
pointed out, there is a diet change in this group - a shift to rice.
(Because it is easier to cook, IWA may take note.)

**************

Unlike last Century, "energy and development" in this Century is a
challenge of those left behind for generations as others advanced, keeping
up their securities and advancing a little or a lot.

If they are now in the bottom two quintiles, it is because their share in
the total has grown, in turn because their fertility rates and gains in
infant, child, and maternal mortality reductions have been the highest. (We
don't have Census data by income groups, so this is my assumption based on
understanding migration data over the years).

That is, the top three quintiles had greater opportunity to both adopt
technologies and gain advantage out of it, be it electricity or LPG and
such. Now the real bottom quintile is not amenable to last Century's
methods and patience.

***
For decades, the intellectual obsession with "renewable biomass" has been a
moral crime against the poor.

Now the intellectual obsession with "clean" is sure to prove another moral
crime against the poor. (Not just stoves, even the mania against coal
power.)

The poor will not be surprised at all. They have seen it all before.


Nikhil


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(US +1) 202-568-5831


On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 3:41 PM, <cec1863 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Nikhil, Harold, Crispin, et al,
>
> I agree with Nikhil's conclusion that the present world level ISO & TC235
> approach to the identification of a subset of superior (or good enough)
> solid fuel stoves is premature. I think I once likened it to ranking the
> performance of different makes of automobiles at the dawn of auto era when
> biomass fueled steam powered propulsion was still an option. Like today's
>  many small manufacturers of solid fuel stoves, in those days there were
> dozens perhaps hundreds of little companies experimenting with different
> types of fuel and technologies for combusting and converting the energy
> into useful motion.
>
> Testing domestic cooking and heating stoves‎ in terms of their abstract
> efficiency and health and environmental impacts does not generate much
> useful information about what types of new or upgraded stoves different
> groups of stove users will prefer and what are the reasons for their stove
> performance preferences.
>
> When the focus shifts from the stove as a combustion, space heating,
> cooking technology and concentrates on appreciating in depth the functions
> of baseline stoves in culturally, economically, environmentally, etc
> identifiable  groups of stove users, it becomes possible to design
> multi-functional stoves that improve upon the performance of traditional
> baseline stoves from the end users point of view.
>
> The aim is to improve the cost/benefit rating of new stoves to the point
> where the value proposition becomes irresistible to specific segments of
> the stove buying public somewhere on the planet. Obviously it is possible
> to design a more desirable ‎"improved" stove which does not necessarily
> also improve combustion efficiency and/or reduce emissions. It may be
>  easier to operate and keep clean, vents more smoke out of the kitchen, has
> more cooking surface, incorporates additional desired functions (TEGs,
> water heating, oven feature, etc).
>
> The ethnographic accumulation of multi-functional traditional stove
> performance profiles helps us to:
>
> 1.) construct a an abstract model of prioritized stove functions
> (hierarchy of stove function preferences); and
>
> 2.) give stove designers, manufacturers, marketers, regulators, and
> funding agents a target to aim at when trying to launch new stove products
> in markets flooded with low cost/low performance traditional stoves.
> .....or high priced improved stoves which score very poorly against a
> hierarchy of essential and preferred dimensions of stove performance based
> on the market dominant traditional stoves,
>
> The question that needs to be researced and answered by stove designers
> and manufacturers is what specific types of traditional stove performances
> need to be built into an improved stove for it to be judged an improvement
> over the traditional stoves that dominate the local and regional stove
> market.
>
> One strategy is to figure out least cost/least disruption changes to well
> established traditional stoves - and their production by indigenous
> fabricators - that is compatable with changes in combustion dynamics of
>  traditional stoves, resulting in significant improvements in efficiency
> and reduced emissions performance of modified traditional stoves (smuggling
> changes into the old stove).
>
> One of the benefits from conducting ethnographic studies of the
>  traditional stoves/fuels/fabrication/marketing /regulation systems is to
> establish a baseline against which to measure improvements and
> retrogressions in cost benefit performance. It is common sense that an
> improved stove with an overall lower cost benefit performance rating than
> dominant traditional stove‎s will never displace a traditional stove from
> the local and regional stove market.
>
> I think I have previously introduced the idea of a stove race between
> alternative stoves targeting specific user groups. Simply record how
> competing new and traditional stoves are used by particular target
> communities after a suitable period training and practice with the new
> stoves. There are simple methods to get preliminary feedback on the likes
> and dislikes of different user groups to a spectrum of alternative biomass
> stoves. We end up with different types and levels of user satisfaction or
> dissatisfaction with new and traditional types of stoves. First
> impressions, reports by users about advantages and disadvantages of new vs
> baseline (traditional) stoves, 3rd party observations about whether the
> stove is operated according to manufacturer's recommendations (learning and
> actually internalizing a different way of operating a domestic stove).
>
> It goes without saying that all stoves compete in the same race with no
> hidden persuaders or subsidies. The playing field is simply the response of
> stove users to the competing stove products and their scoring of the
> "cooking experience"
>
> What I am talking about is a simple minded "free market" stove user
> assessment of competing stoves after users have been trained to use a new
> cooking/heating stove and then given the opportunity to use it for a month,
> 6 months, or up to a year.
>
> What happen when we make the end user the sensitive instrument for
> assessing the performance of competing stove products rather than the
> engineers, chemists, physicists, air quality scientists, economists and
> bankers, gov't regulators, etc.?
>
>  What if stoves are viewed as cultural constructs and tools for achieving
> tangible culturally specified objectives such as the hearth effect, or
> insect control, or the cooking of favourite foods, or identity statement,
> or time management, or clothes- crop-herb-fuel drying, or 'you name it'.
> Then we stovers have a methodology whereby we can ask groups of stove user
> ‎to codify their stove experience in terms of the answers they give to
> questions asked in such a wat as to record stove performance as much
> better, a little better the same and a little worse and much worse than the
> baseline traditional stove(s). We end up with an overall scoreing of
> several new stoves in comparison to the a particular baseline traditional
> stove. We get a series of stove performance preference profiles out of such
> a simple and very approximate methodology.
>
> It should be  possible to  organize the stove use experience of groups of
> stove users into hierarchies of preferred functions for traditional stoves.
> We can then chart our progress toward designing and fabricating a high
> efficienct/low emmission new stove that also competes with the traditional
> stoves currently dominating the local stove market
>
> In search and service,
> Cecil
>
>
>
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
> *From: *Traveller
> *Sent: *Saturday, January 7, 2017 1:46 PM
> *To: *Harold Annegarn
> *Reply To: *miata98 at gmail.com
> *Cc: *Crispin Pemberton-Pigott; Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
> *Subject: *Re: [Stoves] Domestic stoves, air pollution and health ==>
> Back to basics
>
> Harold:
>
> Your key to "Back to basics" was -- "*Develop a standard method for
> testing the energy and emissions performance of a domestic stove designed
> for cooking and space heating*,"
>
> I wonder if you mean a standard method independent of the context in which
> these stoves are design and used?
>
> If not, the whole Lima Agreement and IWA have to be junked.
>
> And replaced with something serious at the sub-national levels (to be
> decided according to economic geographies and capacities for intervention,
> among other things) that respects the contextual significance of "fuel
> consumption" and "emissions".
>
> I for one do not believe that "efficiency" and "emissions" are uniformly
> relevant; their importance - relative to other elements of "stove
> performance" as judged by users such as convenience, versatility,
> functional diversity, ability to adjust time and fuel management - varies
> by context.
>
> The problem is, how are "emission rates" to be judged, other than for CO,
> NMVOCs, SO2? If PM2.5, the "box paradigm" becomes paramount, if only with
> different parameters depending on the context. And these EPA, BAMG wild
> horses will go any distance to argue "premature mortality" consequences to,
> um, death!
>
> The fundamental error was in setting Tiers. I think it was meant to
> satisfy the group. I wasn't there and haven't heard from anybody present.
> But I saw your name in the Strategic Business Plan, so I wonder if you have
> an answer -- can "emission rates" be assigned any rating in terms of
> "clean"?
>
> If not, I have no problem.
>
> Same thing about "efficiency". If no claims of saving trees or monies or
> collection time accompany these "standard methods", I have no problem
> either.
>
> But that means much of the decades-long history of solid fuel stoving has
> to be discarded.
>
> Perhaps time has come to do just that -- to test stoves in contextually
> specified method, but without any prejudices as to the impacts of those
> results.
>
> If you and other stove experts concede that, I will be very happy. For a
> day.
>
> ***********************
> What this leads to is another way of helping poor cooks. It implies -
>
> a) Forget the emission-health paradigm. It is too much smoke and too many
> mirrors. WHO and EPA have no jurisdiction to dabble in stoves policy, which
> essentially must be contextual and focus on usability of stoves -
> functionality, durability - for a certain menu and time and time
> constraint. (Not how many minutes does it take to boil two liters of water
> but rather, what can be done in 30 minutes, 50 minutes, 90 minutes for a
> given menu? It need not matter if the menu is the same as in current
> practice or that the time requirement is the same for a particular task;
> people adjust. Just give us ratings that mean something in use.)
>
> b) Cleaner air is a matter of targets, policies and measures for a
> particular geography, cohort (age/sex distribution), and schedule for
> compliance with nationally legislated AAQs, i.e., "contextual". It is
> insane to target only household stoves, nationwide. There is no logic in
> eliminating solid fuels everywhere as was done in the OECD countries' urban
> areas between 1950s and 1990s. (They are still used in cities, suburbs and
> rural areas of the US.) And NSPS process of EPA variety for residential
> woodheaters is not the answer. All instruments of air quality management
> need to be brought to the table - bans on fuel or combustion device type,
> taxes and subsidies to encourage fuel substitution, knowledge and debates.
> Call AWMA, not IHME or EPA, and heavens, not WHO or GACC.
>
> c) "Biomass alone" is fuel fetishism. Renewability is contextual, and so
> is the variety of biomass sources (wastes, for instance) and uses
> (construction material, exports, fertilizer). Only an overall biomass
> modernization strategy -- from landscaping around urban shopping malls to
> making bricks out of leafwaste - can identify where the most urgent
> interventions are worth a chance. Not - by a long shot - improved
> woodstoves. (Charcoal and coal, sure.) High quality wood has better uses
> than cooking, and non-wood biomass (i.e., excluding charcoal) is a
> challenge for combustion except for bonfires.
>
> d) Solid fuel household cookstoves will never be as versatile as gas and
> electrical appliances for food, beverage, and hot water preparation. The
> question is whether expected utilization rates will ever be high enough to
> justify the capital investment costs in "clean enough". That points to
> non-household markets as opportunistic targets.
>
> Biomass stovers have had a credibility problem in the energy sector
> (except for heating stoves, where coal is generally superior unless high
> quality wood has no better use). That was the case in 1983 - when Fernando
> Manibog reviewed the "improved stoves programs" - and remains the case
> today. (Though I can argue against the skeptics as well. Otherwise I won't
> be on this list.)
>
> But no amount of technical competence is going to convince a non-technical
> person that s/he is not being bamboozled. The "stover community" has no
> credible quality checks on the contents of an argument (please check mine,
> as Ron does). That's how ISO IWA started in the first place.
>
> Debates over protocols are just the tip of the iceberg.
>
> If a finance minister or a president were to ask me what I think of TC 285
> and what s/he should do, I would now advise "Quit." It's as simple as that.
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
>>
>
>
>
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