[Stoves] Advocacy action: ask the GACC to stop promoting the WBT

[Nikhil Desai]

Xavier:

Aren't you asking a bit too much that GACC make an "official" declaration
about the WBT? It did not have an official standing to require the use of
WBT and related equipment or staff, and it does not have such in requiring
non-use either.

USAID did and does have such influence and perhaps the history of USAID
stove projects may shed light on the perceived promises of WBT over the
last 40 years.

USAID could of course get away with WBT - any version, any equipment - when
not protested by the host government or prevented by it. But even then I
doubt use of WBT and related equipment had an official approval in the US,
with a proper legal imprimatur from the entities that can approve stove
testing methods and certify the equipment. To my mind, these are EPA and
possibly NIST.

It is possible that PCIA - the predecessor of GACC and a joint initiative
of USAID and EPA - enshrined some version of the VITA WBT in the IWA. (PCIA
came into being around 2000 but USAID stoves projects go back to 1970s.)

There are probably good records in USAID project reports of where and when
WBT protocol gave reliable results. When it failed, it may have been
because the protocol had intrinsic conceptual and methodological errors or
the equipment was at fault or the test staff erred.

Of course, one can always fault the cooks for field performance. By its own
account, ARC follows "fuel-free", "cook-free" approach to stove testing.
Whether or not cooks are operating the stove according to some manuals is
anybody's guess.

My point rather is, who cares? Ignoring CO emission rate - on which there
is no debate - and PM2.5 emission rate - whose utility is arguable, the one
thing you, Crispin, and others seem to be concerned about is thermodynamic
efficiency.

My view is, technical efficiencies are context-relevant metric; some users
may care for it more than others and some none at all. Rather, the "save
the trees", "reduce deforestation" mindset is what efficiency measurements
cater to. This is despite ample evidence that no tree lasts forever, nor
every tree as valuable to the owner as every other.  Trees are felled for
their products or for land clearance (for agriculture, buildings, roads,
pipelines, whatever else) and new trees can be and are planted all the
time. I have yet to see a single case where national forest inventory is
stabilized or increased by use of more efficient wood cookstoves.
(Charcoaling and heating markets are a different matter. I am not denying
that historically forest loss may be in part associated with fuel use; I
have seen forest denudation everywhere. Just that I see no reason to think
the stovers community has made an iota of difference yet - nor would make
any soon - in the rate of deforestation. Trees have multiple uses and so do
land, water and labor.)

In short,

a) I see no reason to care if WBT is unreliable about efficiency and fuel
savings. Has WBT use harmed anybody? I am still waiting for an answer.
b) There is, at least in the US, no legal basis for WBT or any other
testing protocol for cookstoves.
c)  Governments, investors, and users have no protection against abuse of
WBT or any other testing protocol by whoever claims to certify any of the
performance metrics. This authority belongs to national governments, not
academics and independent self-proclaimed experts, no matter how good or
relevant their intentions.


PCIA pulled a fast one on all stovers, anointing in the IWA an untested,
unproven, irrelevant method for "stove performance" without asking what
purpose was served by the metrics or the methods. You and others suggest
that WBT is at fault for wrongly computing efficiencies, while I argue that
choosing generally applicable ("international") metrics and methods is
untenable in the first place, without defining what the objective is. I
further argue that the WHO Target Emission Rates for PM2.5 have no
scientifically valid, empirically verified or verifiable basis.

The drama goes on. CDM and Gold Standard are abusing the process the same
way the stovers community has been for decades. What is it that desired,
and by whom? And whose desires are to be served in the first place -- of
the professors and activists or of users? Cookstove efficiency ratings
satisfy competitive designers - "Mine is better!" I don't see any other
justification for sticking with even the historical test records for
cookstoves where the tests have ignored local fuel qualities and operating
practices specific to those cookstoves.

Boil blood, not water. ISO TC 285, CDM and Gold Standard have to be
answerable, because their acts have direct financial implications. GACC, by
contrast, has no skin in the game. Spare them.

Nikhil





On Mar 27, 2017, at 9:58 PM, Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Ranyee,

You didn't reply to my previous email of the 14/03.

The proceedings of the last ETHOS conference still haven't been published,
and there is no information about the Round Robin Testing on the internet.
We would like to know the RRT more in detail.

Hence my few questions:

   - Is there a document, like a report, which presents and describes the
   Round Robin Testing?
   - What is the goal of the RRT?
   - When did the RRT start, and when do you expect it to finish?
   - Which protocol(s) will be used during that RRT? Which data is gonna be
   compared?
   - "The agreement that the testing centers made when making plans for the
   RRT is that participating centers would not be shared". Shouldn't the
   origin of the testing data be shared? Can we still know which organization
   is coordinating/managing the RRT?
   - When you say *"**protocols have already been changed and updated from
   the WBT"*, which protocols are you talking about?
   - Is the GACC now able to officially declare the WBT has serious flaws,
   and therefore should not be recommended to certify stoves or select them
   for programmatic purposes? This was why I meant by "taking a decision about
   the WBT".


Thanks again and best regards,

Xavier


On 3/14/17 00:29, Xavier Brandao wrote:

Dear Ranyee,

Thanks for the quick answer.

*"**In my earlier message, I described how the protocols have already been
changed and updated from the WBT. So your question about making decisions
about the WBT doesn’t really reflect the current situation since things
have already moved beyond that."*
It is news to me.
Unless I missed something, here is what you said in your previous reply:
*"**We all recognize that there is room to improve, and that is already the
starting motivation for ongoing work by many people.  There are protocol
improvements that are in progress and in discussion, which will be
published as soon as they are complete."*

I have nowhere seen mentioned, in the discussions, on the GACC website, or
online, that the GACC had "moved beyond the WBT". It is very good to hear.

Nevertheless, the WBT 4.2.3 is still on top of the GACC testing protocol
page:
http://cleancookstoves.org/technology-and-fuels/testing/protocols.html

*"if you’d like more information on how to join that collaboration and
discussion, please let me know."*
Yes, gladly, I would like to have more information. Sally Seitz, the
secretary of the TC 285, told me I couldn't join nor receive news from the
meetings, since France was not on the list of countries. She advised me to
contact the AFNOR, which I did, but didn't get an answer so far, and I
expect the process to be (if it is successful) long and bureaucratic.

*"If you’d like to contribute testing data to the RRT, please let me know,
since more data will help us have a better sense of the sources of
variation."*
Sorry, I don't have any testing data to contribute to the RRT.

I have a few questions:

   - Is there a document, like a report, which presents and describes the
   Round Robin Testing?
   - What is the goal of the RRT?
   - When did the RRT start, and when do you expect it to finish?
   - Which protocol(s) will be used during that RRT? Which data is gonna be
   compared?
   - "The agreement that the testing centers made when making plans for the
   RRT is that participating centers would not be shared". Shouldn't the
   origin of the testing data be shared? Can we still know which organization
   is coordinating/managing the RRT?
   - When you say *"**protocols have already been changed and updated from
   the WBT"*, which protocols are you talking about?
   - Is the GACC now able to officially declare the WBT has serious flaws,
   and therefore should not be recommended to certify stoves or select them
   for programmatic purposes? This was why I meant by "taking a decision about
   the WBT".


Thanks again and best regards,

Xavier



On 3/13/17 15:11, Ranyee Chiang wrote:

Dear Xavier,

In my earlier message, I described how the protocols have already been
changed and updated from the WBT.  So your question about making decisions
about the WBT doesn’t really reflect the current situation since things
have already moved beyond that.  The duration of the ISO process which has
updated procedures is hard to predict, but the lab testing protocol has
already passed one round of voting and it will be up for another round of
voting within the next week or so.  After we know the results of that
voting, we will know whether it is ready to publish or if there needs to be
additional modification.  People have been working on it continuously over
the last few years through the ISO Technical Committee 285 Working Groups
to resolve longstanding issues and if you’d like more information on how to
join that collaboration and discussion, please let me know.

I do know that the ETHOS organizers plan to post the presentations from the
conference, but I’m not sure about their timeline.  The budget for the RRT
was only to ship stoves and fuels to testing centers, and the rest was
based on volunteer contributions from the participating testing centers.
The agreement that the testing centers made when making plans for the RRT
is that participating centers would not be shared, so that people would
feel comfortable joining this learning opportunity.  Our next steps with
the Round Robin Testing are to talk with participating testing centers
one-on-one, since this was an exercise designed to help participating
centers improve their efforts.  If you’d like to contribute testing data to
the RRT, please let me know, since more data will help us have a better
sense of the sources of variation.

Best regards,

Ranyee


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