[Stoves] A cookstoves grant from the Gates Foundation gets mixed reviews

Wed Jan 25 01:35:23 CST 2017

Thanks for the heads up Paul.

I understand that he has written at least one article before on the stove sector. Perhaps we can find some more.

" This is almost surely the biggest single grant in the history of the sector, ..."

The largest grant I know of is the Ulaanbaatar Clean Air Project (UB-CAP) which was $45m.

There was no parallel health study but there was a parallel PM monitoring system put in place to document the effect of changing 90% of the ger stoves. The benefit was a 65% reduction in PM2.5 from all sources. Domestic combustion is now less than half the air pollution and work continues to bring forward vastly cleaner ‎low pressure boilers (hydronic heaters, to Americans).

The Hebei Clean Air project is much larger ($80m) but it is not so easy to call it a grant. Depends on how you look at it. The money is a loan but it goes out as a grant to individual homes, so the latter's perspective it is $80m worth of grants.

Regards
Crispin

Stovers,

Link below to a well-written and timely article about stoves, done be Marc Gunther, a professional journalist who has covered stove topics before.   In time for our ETHOS conference (and for comments on this listserv.).

Paul

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu<mailto:psanders at ilstu.edu>
Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.com<http://www.drtlud.com>

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject:        Fwd: [New post] A cookstoves grant from the Gates Foundation gets mixed reviews
Date:   Tue, 24 Jan 2017 16:24:37 +0000
From:   Marc Gunther <marc.gunther at gmail.com><mailto:marc.gunther at gmail.com>
To:     Marc Gunther <marc.gunther at gmail.com><mailto:marc.gunther at gmail.com>

Marc Gunther posted: " Nonprofits that make cookstoves for the global poor have not been blessed with an abundance of resources. So  you would think that the community of stovers, as they're known, would be pleased by a big infusion of money into the sector from the US govern"
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A cookstoves grant from the Gates Foundation gets mixed reviews<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/2017/01/24/a-cookstoves-grant-from-the-gates-foundation-gets-mixed-reviews/>
by Marc Gunther<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/author/marcgunther/>

[gloliath_double_flameorange_ef_branded_shadow-600x336]

An LPG cookstove, from Envirofit

Nonprofits that make cookstoves for the global poor have not been blessed with an abundance of resources. So  you would think that the community of stovers, as they're known, would be pleased by a big infusion of money into the sector from the US government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation<http://www.gatesfoundation.org/>. Nope.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) last fall announced<https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-contributes-global-effort-prevent-manage-lung-diseases> that, with support from the Gates Foundation, it will fund a $30.5 million, multi-country, five-year study<https://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm?aid=9207315&icde=31563588&ddparam=&ddvalue=&ddsub=&cr=1&csb=default&cs=ASC> to see if cookstoves that burn liquified petroleum gas (LPG) reduce deaths and illnesses, especially in women and children who suffer the greatest exposure. This is almost surely the biggest single grant in the history of the sector, and it sets the stage for further investments in cookstoves, if the study finds that cleaner LPG stoves deliver meaningful health benefits.

A byproduct of crude oil or natural gas, LPG is made of propane or butane or both -- it's similar to the fuel that powers backyard gas grills in the U.S. -- and it's distributed in poor countries in 12kg cylinders. It's easier to get LPG to poor people living without electricity than it is build out a grid, says Michael Kelly, the deputy managing director of the World LPG Association. "It's a very good solution for countries that are rapidly developing," he told me. “You can essentially take a cylinder of natural gas and put it on a donkey and you can have clean energy anywhere.”

Well, sure, clean energy in the sense that LPG burns cleanly and thus shouldn't, if used properly, contribute to the household air pollution that causes more than 4 million premature deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)<http://www.who.int/indoorair/en/>. Then again, it's not truly clean because LPG, like all fossil fuels, generates CO2 emissions that threaten the health of the planet and its inhabitants by contributing to climate change.

That's one reason why some stovers are underwhelmed by the NIH-Gates LPG study. Others say that it's clear that LPG stoves will deliver health benefits, if properly used, so why do a study? Still others worry that the NIH-Gates study could lead funders with deep pockets to favor LPG over cookstoves that burn biomass, i.e., wood, charcoal, dung or agricultural waste. The vast majority of cookstoves in poor countries burn biomass.

So what should we make of the NIH-Gates grant? As always, nothing is simple in the cookstove sector, which has an unfortunate history of promising more -- improved health! climate change mitigation! empowered women! local jobs! -- than it can deliver. And yet, until the world finds a way to get clean energy to the roughly 1.3 billion people who lack it, cookstoves are too important to ignore.

Read more of this post<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/2017/01/24/a-cookstoves-grant-from-the-gates-foundation-gets-mixed-reviews/#more-17822>

Marc Gunther<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/author/marcgunther/> | January 24, 2017 at 10:02 am | Tags: Adam Creighton<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?tag=adam-creighton>, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?tag=bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation>, Christa Roth<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?tag=christa-roth>, Dr. Gail Rogers<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?tag=dr-gail-rogers>, Inyenyeri<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?tag=inyenyeri>, National Institutes of Health<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?tag=national-institutes-of-health>, StoveTeam International<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?tag=stoveteam-international> | Categories: Global health<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?cat=174727>, Global poverty<http://nonprofitchronicles.com/?cat=295672> | URL: http://wp.me/p5ANrp-4Ds

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