[Stoves] Chimenys not the answer thus far. Re: LPG Watch - Update 2017-07-03 (Paul on Kirk Smith Comments on the India LPG)

[Paul Anderson]

Crispin

India had a major program in the 1980s for "smokeless chulas", with the 
basic objective of having chimneys.
  Ref:
> Why Have Improved Cook-Stove Initiatives in *India* Failed? (PDF ... 
> <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309762986_Why_Have_Improved_Cook-Stove_Initiatives_in_India_Failed> 
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309762986_Why_Have_Improved_Cook-Stove_Initiatives_in_India_Failed 
> In *India*, efforts to design and diffuse improved cook-stoves. began 
> with nationalist .... early *1980s* onward, by the late 2000s, 
> virtually none were in. use. In contrast of the ... But this was 
> easier said than done; *chimneys* were exo-. tic to *India* and ... to 
> convince villagers to adopt ''*smokeless chulhas*”and keep. flies away 
> from ...
And simply putting chimneys onto plancha stoves (rocket or otherwise) 
has not resolved the issues.

Paul

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

On 7/20/2017 11:18 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott 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 benefits 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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