[Stoves] Toward sensible performance metrics (From Irrelevant lab testing - for what purpose?)

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Nikhil



Referring to the attachment only: It would, with only a couple of dozen edits, make a very modern policy information piece. Well done.



I will add one bone to pick over (emphasis):



Energy poverty: Users’ inability to transition to “modern energy” with minimal expenditure of time and effort in fuel access.” This inability is considered to be primarily financial – the capital cost of making the transition up to the level that modern energy becomes the primary or exclusive source of lighting and cooking/heating. The qualification about time and effort is added to discount situations where a customer may have to walk a great distance to fill a fuel container or charge a battery. Other physical and economic barriers may also limit the transition – e.g., unaffordability of housing where a utility may agree to connect an electric meter or a gas company agree to register a customer.



+++++++++



Something that impacts the usability of LPG is that public transport (in South Africa for example) will not permit one to carry an LPG cylinder. Minibuses, the ubiquitous transport method, don’t allow them as too dangerous.



They will transport batteries, wood, charcoal, wood pellets, even containers of battery acid (a common additive to home-brewed drinks). So that is a discount situation for that particular fuel.



It is also worth pointing out that disconnect, a de-linking, has been achieved between several solid fuels and emissions. Much of policy affecting stoves is founded on the belief that there is a energy ladder and that solid fuels are at the bottom of it. This is simply no longer true. In the US and Europe people are moving ahead to solid fuels – unprocessed in many cases. It is not true that they are all uniformly ‘polluting’. The Masonry Heaters Association has done a great job demonstrating not only that they can build fixed stone/brick installations with extremely low emissions from raw wood, they have test methods that are acceptable to the EPA, which might mean acceptable to state and local jurisdictions.



‘Access to modern energy’ is developing into a broader church.



Regards

Crispin


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20170604/ee6d5792/attachment.html>