[Stoves] LPG Watch - Update 2017-07-03 (Paul on Kirk Smith Comments on the India LPG)

Thu Jul 20 13:29:30 CDT 2017

Crispin:

Need I remind you of the path-breaking ESMAP work on "contextual design and
promotion of cleaner biomass stoves," which Cecil and you were/are part of?
That is the paradigm -- of usable  stoves, various sizes and shapes, with
contextual determination of objectives and performance metrics - that needs
to break through the fossilized mindset of "efficiency" and "hourly
emission rates of PM2.5".

Paul and others should be in contact with the Ministry of New and Renewable
Energy (MNRE) about the National Biomass Cookstoves Programme
<http://mnre.gov.in/schemes/decentralized-systems/national-biomass-cookstoves-initiative/>.
In 2014, MNRE had launched
<https://energypedia.info/images/f/f7/Dr._Parveen_Dhamija_%28MNRE%29_-_Unnat_Chulha_Abhiyan.pdf>
a
scheme - Unnat Chulha Abhiyan
<http://mnre.gov.in/file-manager/dec-biomass-cookstoves/programme-biomass-cookstoves_unnat_chulha_abhiyan-2013-2014.pdf>
(loosely
translated as Progressive Stove Initiative) with numerical targets up to
March 2017.

I have no idea if there is a post-2017 plan of activities. But see Approved
Models of Portable Improved Biomass Cookstove Manufacturers
<http://mnre.gov.in/file-manager/UserFiles/approved-models-of-portable-improved-biomass-cookstove-manufactures.pdf>.
And an ad for a pellet stove here - https://www.indiamart.com/
tanusolutions/improved-biomass-cook-stove-mnre-approved.html.

Now about chimneys:

I don't know about "chimney stoves".  I remember some homes with make-do
chimneys. When I asked around in Gujarat and Maharashtra villages that get
heavy rains and experience extremes of heat and cold (115 F to 45 F or 45 C
to 7 C) have a variety of home designs. Nobody cooked much on "three stone
fire", the "baseline" Kirk Smith & Co. have cooked up. Yes, many of them
had such a "stove", usually outside for heating water. There might also be
an "outside" kitchen with a roof and two sides, with a built (bricks and
mud) stove for some cooking. And then there would be an indoor kitchen,
with a built stove, with or without a chimney.

Chimneys are rare, but the imagery you see in marketed pictures of
"traditional stoves" is mythological. The idea that people spew out loads
of smoke and suffer indoors for long hours and putting this pollution out
is just as bad is also mythology.

Whether and how use of chimneys affects ambient air quality depends on the
context. There are many sources of PM2.5 - natural as well as human
activities.

I concur with your "It is so plainly obvious that hoods and chimneys solve
the largest % of the problem".  This has been the case for decades in
India!! The traditional "construction industry" of bricklayers, masons,
plumbers, window-makers, etc. have designed smoke ventilation.

If I take you at your word - "the only remarkable thing is why Berkeley et
al are so resistant to pushing it" - the only conceivable answer is, "They
don't know. They substitute models for direct observations, manufacture
estimates without real-life validation".

That is the academic disease easily traceable to the structure and the
assumptions of the Global Burden of Disease. Fake input, fake output.

I have yet to see a study of a single village - ideally, several clusters
of villages with different agro-climatic characteristics -- measuring
indoor and outdoor air quality and exposures with solid fuels over a year.

The tragedy of Kirk Smith & Co. literature is that the evidence base simply
does not exist. Without a hundred or two hundred two-year studies of "human
environments", it is impossible to arrive at any opinions about whether
chimneys just put pollution out.

Again, all I can say is that Kirk Smith & Co. have this myth of "truly
health protective" design of cooking systems where just as stacking is not
allowed, nor are chimneys. The inevitable result will be creating a
two-tier society in the multi-tier society that India already is. (He
should do studies of cookstoves in by religion and caste, which may be
proxies for housing design and qualify of neighborhoods, access to physical
and social services, eating and cooking habits.)

Ultimately it is the blind faith in the patently ridiculous models and
cooked up estimates - with assumptions of equitoxicity of PM2.5 and of
extrapolating dose-response data from non-comparable sources - that reduce
all ill health to DALY. DALYs just fuse all disease and disability in one,
for a generic dead human over a generic life. Specifics don't matter.
(Prof. Smith continues to do research on specifics too, which is good. Some
day he may wake up and realize that DALYs were just not worth anybody's
bother.)

Nikhil

Nikhil Desai
Skype: nikhildesai888

On Jul 20, 2017, at 12:18 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

Dear Nikhil

I am once again disturbed by the fact that there appears nowhere in the
‘plan’ for India, greatly improved chulhas. How can the only choices be
‘LPG or traditional chulha’?

Is the idea that no one should work on improving biomass stoves so as to
keep the baseline ‘bad’ in order to make LPG look ‘good’?

The biggest improvement that can be made which reaches everyone is to
introduce effective chimney stoves. Get the smoke out of the kitchen and
share it with the whole community. It already gets there now, filtered a
little by the cook’s lings, but in effect there is no difference between
the present situation and everyone having chimneys, except the deletion of
most exposure to high concentrations.

Argue as you might about exposure to outdoor air, it is nothing compared
with indoor air and it will always be so for multiple reasons.  It the
purpose is to reduce exposure, put it outdoors first then we will talk
about better combustion. It is so plainly obvious that hoods and chimneys
solve the largest % of the problem, the only remarkable thing is why
Berkeley et al are so resistant to pushing it.

Stoves that vent entirely indoor should be banned unless there is some
zero-risk assessment. My gas stove has a vent hood over it to take out the
PM from cooking, which far exceeds anything from the combustion of fuel.

If India put even $1m into chulha combustion and smoke evacuation, they
would get more total benefits at the BOP than the LPG programme because it
would continue indefinitely thereafter at no cost.

Paul: apply!

Crispin

Paul:

Thank you. I am surprised that within a few days of declaring his challenge
to the biomass stove community
<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53856e1ee4b00c6f1fc1f602/t/590b78d49de4bb6e66c97095/1493924052510/ESD+editorial+on+biomas.pdf>,
where he said there will be 25 million Indian households not covered by the
LPG subsidy scheme even by 2025, Prof. Smith seems to take away the market
for "supplemental" biomass stoves for the poor Indians who have just
started using LPG but haven't yet made a complete transition.

I quote from his challenge, "Now the bottom line in terms of advanced
biomass stoves. LPG (plus some natural gas and electricity) cooking for 90%
of the population, even if achieved, still leaves some 150 million using
poorly functioning traditional chulhas next decade."

Now he puts priority on ready refills because "Finally, health and other ben
efits only fully occur with near 100% usage and thus near elimination of the
biomass chulha for cooking."

He alone knows - or reserves the right to proclaim - what is meant by
"full" accrual of "health and other benefits".

+++

Arguendo, what he is suggesting is, "Forget those 150 million for now; make
sure the extra few billion dollars today go to guaranteeing reliable
refills for those who have signed up for the LPG connection, whether or not
they want the refills."

To me, this is a haughty anti-poor agenda with only one possible rationale
-- with even some households making complete, irreversible transition to
LPG, computing aDALYs as "health benefits of LPG" get some respectability
as they are measured "fully" (or fool-ly). Enough business potential for a
hundred PhDs and post-docs for the next 30 years of whatever long it takes
to achieve the Tier 4 nirvana. It's not as if the Berkeley crowd can put a
number on aDALYs in India from 50+ years of LPG use.

>From the viewpoint of energy and budgeting policies, Prof. Smith's argument
to guarantee reliable refills - even seek to mandate them - is academic
fantasizing at best and pernicious mania at worst.

What Prof Smith is advocating is a neat class division between those who
must completely get out of what he calls "chulha trap" as soon as possible,
on the one hand, and the remainder marginalized, "left behind" population.

It so turns out both these groups are about 250 million, assuming average
household size of 5 (it's slightly smaller and getting smaller).

i) the 50 million post-2014 household connections in India (22 million so
far, 28 million by 2019) that Prof Smith wants to make sure do not use
biomass chulhas unless he certifies them as "truly health protective", and,
ii) 50 million households that will be left behind in 2019. (With some
growth in connections but also in population, 2025 "have nots" will come
down to 150 million as he has projected. Currently, piped natural gas and
previous household LPG connections come to around 120 million. Commercial
cooking is gas, LPG, electricity as well as biomass and coal.)

A class division. California elitism, I might add. Prof. Smith and Ajay
Pillarisetti want to make sure "no worry about running out Sat
night just before a big party". Yeah, right. At the margin, we are talking
about households with monthly cash expenditures of $100 or less. Their big
Saturday night parties won't stop for lack of LPG.

+++++++

Then there are some 500 million others - whose subsidized LPG connections
were approved for the post-2014 scheme of DBTL (Direct Benefits Transfer
for LPG in bank accounts) plus households that have LPG connections without
subsidy, after "ghost" connections had been eliminated. (I am assuming that
about 100-200 million people or equivalent use only piped natural gas and
electricity for cooking and heating.)

Nobody knows how many of these 500 million to date have used LPG
exclusively or along with "stacking". My hypothesis is that the middle
class urban folks who got LPG back in the 1960s and 1970s "advanced" in all
manners -- education, income, diets -- and reduced their burden of disease
far much more than that can be attributed to getting out of the "chulha
trap". But heck, anything can be attributed to anything so long as you get
enough nods in the audience. Attribution is not causality.

While we wait for the cost of refills and purported "social benefits", let
me share some thoughts to ponder.

1. Stacking is consumer choice, not public health professors' prerogative.
Until all sources of PM2.5 - natural and anthropogenic - are banned so as
to keep exposures within WHO "guidelines" (worthless until adopted in
national laws and effectively enforced), there is no use even debating Kirk
Smith's theology of complete and permanent transition to LPG and
electricity by all poor people in India. Because if one household must make
such transition, each one must otherwise any leakage will lead to premature
deaths a la GBD algorithms - emission to death. Dream on -- not just
"overnight" but a few decades.

2. Behavioral change for improving health outcomes from cooking is not just
a problem of fuel/stove access and affordability but also of food access
and affordability. A "clean cookstove" is not a pill and an LPG refill is
not a condom.

3.  The quantity of subsidized LPG to household connections or the subsidy
per refill - or both - have to be kept in check. An argument can be made
that the productivity increase from quicker, cleaner cooking (and
outsourcing cooking) will increase tax revenues to subsidize LPG in
perpetuity (or "steady state equilibrium"), but that requires a million
dollar research grant.

Nikhil
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