[Stoves] Kirk Smith: A challenge to the biomass stove community

Nikhil Desai pienergy2008 at gmail.com
Wed Jun 28 16:47:17 CDT 2017


Below a Guest Editorial Why both gas and biomass are needed today to
address the solid fuel cooking problem in India: A challenge to the biomass
stove community
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0973082617304635>by
Prof. Kirk Smith in the journal Energy for Sustainable Development (June
2017; available
<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53856e1ee4b00c6f1fc1f602/t/590b78d49de4bb6e66c97095/1493924052510/ESD+editorial+on+biomas.pdf>
for free on his website). I wonder what you all think. It is addressed only
to the current Indian situation.

The title acknowledges that the "solid fuel cooking problem" is to be
solved by both gas and biomass, often a "solid fuel". (Apart from
coal-fired electricity, which too has eliminated a lot of solid fuel or
kerosene requirements in cooking and heating water/space.)

He says, "Although there are far better biomass cookstoves than in the
past, they have not progressed to the point that they are equivalent to gas
in terms of reliability, flexibility, durability, efficiency, and
cleanliness." Still,


"It is not enough just to have a cleaner cooking technology sitting in
the shop,
what is needed is to find an effective way to promote and provide these
clean and efficient products to the 25 million households who will still
need them in 2025. The biomass stove industry is going to have to think
well beyond the technology itself, to how to disseminate at the scale
needed and promote consistent usage over time and reduce use of traditional
methods. In the places needed. To the women who need it."


Seems like this is his second epiphany, after the first in 2012 that young
women in India were immediately taken in by a new woodstove that "Cooks
Like Gas!" And this is also his second challenge to the biomass stove
community. Back in November 2014, announcing the WHO Guidelines for Solid
Fuel Use in Households, he had written,

"Beginning this week, for the first time in human history,* it will no
longer be possible **to claim a stove** is truly "improved" or "clean"*
without reference to *authoritative global set of health-based guidelines*
.... Notably, this document formalizes what was only stated conceptually in
the 2005 AQGs, which is that the guidelines should apply in every
*non-occupational
micro-environment where people spend significant time *-- indoor or
outdoor. ... The document also addresses chimney stoves as well as having
sections on coal and kerosene as household fuels -- discouraging both
because of apparent extra toxicities...

. *The quantitative recommendations will
be a challenge to the biomass stove community in that, in keeping
with the health evidence, truly low emission rates of unvented stoves will
be needed to protect health adequately.  We firmly hope that the ongoing
process of creating stove standards under the ISO process will adopt these
recommendations, as was agreed previously..  I might add in this context,
that newer evidence since 2005 on the health effects of combustion air
pollution, as for example found in the latest Global Burden of Disease
estimates, would indicate that when the next revision of the AQGs is done
(as now planned), the limits will become even
lower.  The stove community thus should probably therefore consider what
this document recommends as likely to tighten further over time."*

(Emphasis added. Presumably, occupational exposure of children in Indian
commercial kitchens and


I for one don't believe that the WHO "Guidelines" and Emission Target Rates
for Tier 4 are "health-based" - a fake "health metric" generated precisely
so as to threaten non-existent regulatory control "likely to tighten"
further. They are not "authoritative global set" nor based on "newer
evidence" -- just model estimates based on unverifiable or easily refutable
assumptions and spurious data.

Leave my quibbling aside. His new "performance metrics" of "reliability,
flexibility, durability" are a leap beyond the faith of TC 285 (that
voluntary standards will flood the market with better biomass stoves). His
challenge - "how to disseminate at the scale needed" reflects a lesson from
India: the Indian Advanced Biomass Stoves project went "Up in Smoke"
<http://www.caravanmagazine.in/reportage/smoke-india-perfect-cookstove> -
the fire may be relit - and the fracking revolution changed the oil and gas
industry, handing over Modi a chance to rekindle his predecessor's LPG
promotion scheme (which had little to do with avoiding DALYs).

Only time will tell how many Indians' premature deaths are avoided - by
2025, compared to say 2015 - by some $100 billion cumulative subsidy over
the lifetimes of the future dead. (The total number of deaths in India will
rise because of aging, and separating HAP from other air pollution
exposures and diseases they contribute to will require even more heroic
assumptions). But millions of users seem to want to use gas and
electricity?

This new challenge is both appropriate and necessary -- how is that "last
mile" or "last 100 mile" user population going to be reached where it is
too difficult for oil companies and electricity companies to reach?

If biomass stoves can deliver good enough reliability, flexibility, and
durability - not "like gas" necessarily -  for the "right markets", they
will not be "siting in the shop". Time to rethink the problem and the
solution. (It's the economy and versatility, not thermodynamics.)

Just aim to produce contextually appropriate, usable, marketable stoves
with minds planted firmly in those contexts, not Switzerland. It doesn't
matter what high priests in Swiss mountains (WHO, ISO, GSF) say and do.

Nikhil

------------------------
Why both gas and biomass are needed today to address the solid fuel cooking
problem in India: A challenge to the biomass stove community

Kirk R. Smith
<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0973082617304635>

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2017.04.001

Before 150 years ago, the entire world used solid fuels for cooking,
biomass and coal. Now more than 60 percent use gas and/or electricity –
fuels that are basically clean at use. This is serious progress in terms of
air pollution and health impacts, even if there are close to 3 billion
people who have not yet been able to change.

Although there are far better biomass cookstoves than in the past, they
have not progressed to the point that they are equivalent to gas in terms
of reliability, flexibility, durability, efficiency, and cleanliness.
Confirmatory evidence is that few, if any, women who have the option will
change from gas to biomass, but many tens of millions do the reverse every
year when given the chance. New biomass stoves are still coming, however,
and we can hope that some will perform well enough over time in village
households to be true competitors.

Cost and accessibility of gas fuels is still a barrier, and has led to a
slower growth of gas than might have occurred with active policies to
expand both access and supply to the poor. In India, for example, although
growing at about 6 percent a year, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas)/PNG (piped
natural gas) grew only fast enough to cover growth in the middle class.
About 700 million of the poor were stuck in the *chulha* (open cookstove)
trap for 25 years at least. Until recently, there were no special programs
or efforts to accelerate growth in this population.

Starting in 2015, the GOI and OMCs (Government of India and the 3 oil
marketing companies that market LPG) embarked on three major programs to
actively promote LPG to the poor – each pioneering, aggressive, and relying
heavily on both sophisticated social marketing and what is summarized in
India as “JAM” (electronic bank accounts, biometric ID cards, and mobile
phones). The first program, Pahal, shifted to paying subsidy fuel payments
into people’s bank accounts and thus all LPG is now sold at international
rates in the market, greatly reducing diversion of LPG to the non-household
sector. The second, “Give it Up,” persuaded middle-class households to give
up their subsidies to connect the poor. The third, Ujjwala, underway now,
will provide connections to a total of 50 million poor households by 2019
and has reached 20 million already by April 2017.

In addition, although starting from a small base, PNG connections have been
growing at more than 11% annually with a goal of 20 million by early next
decade. Each of these frees up LPG to be moved to rural areas and reduces
the LPG import burden.

The result is a remarkable increase in the historically modest expansion of
clean fuel connections. The country expects to cover more than 90% of all
households early next decade, although the official target is currently 80
percent by 2019. This at least doubles the historical rate of growth in
clean cookfuel.

What is the cost of the LPG program in India? Not so easy to say because in
2015 the program first greatly cut the inherent waste (“leakage”) in the
past subsidy system, saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year that was
going to restaurants, etc instead of households, although difficult to
estimate because of changes in world petroleum prices that were occurring
as well. In addition, it persuaded, to date, some 13 million middle-class
households to give up their subsidy that was shifted to poor households,
something like a $1.5 billion zero-sum internal “foreign aid” program over
10 years from the well-to-do to the poor. Much of the additional funding
came from the CSR (corporate social responsibility) funds required to be
spent by corporations by recent changes in Indian tax laws. The GOI has
committed $1.2 billion today to the current program through 2019, but this
is less than the other major inputs and probably results in a net savings
to the taxpayer from the situation before 2014. It was a brilliant idea to
treat the old LPG subsidy as an asset, if shifted and targeted well, rather
than a liability and embarrassment as most of us had thought.

I might note that none of this came from the health or environment sectors,
which nevertheless will be benefiting. Nor has it affected the budget of
the renewable energy ministry, which still runs the biomass stove and
biogas programs.

As we all know, whenever a new technology of any sort is adopted, it rarely
displaces the old instantly. High usage is still needed as well as
reduction in use of the old polluting technology for full benefits to be
obtained. As LPG seems nearly universally aspirational in India and the
GOI/OMC programs have found a way to provide access to hundreds of millions
of people, *my and others research agendas now focus on ways to enhance
usage – to shorten the “stacking” period in stove parlance, i.e. to
substantially reduce the use of biomass a*s well. This is typical for
health interventions – not enough just to deliver condoms, bednets,
latrines, etc. – ways are needed to incentivize people to use them and to
stop the unhealthy traditional practices.

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. By itself, this population would be the eighth
largest country in the world, and this is just in India. There is a huge
opportunity to provide cleaner and more efficient stoves to these people
who are not going to be able to afford or have access to gas in the next 15
years. As well as those in other countries. Divide the market into its
appropriate segments and plan accordingly.

One of the lessons of the LPG experience in India, however, has not yet
been fully taken onboard by the biomass stove community – the implications
of scale. With 18,000 local distributors, each with 30-40 employees
operating house to house, and plans to hire 10,000 more distributors
underway, the LPG industry will soon have an army of a half million outside
of cities to wield in promoting and servicing its product locally. And
a well-functioning
infrastructure from port to household to keep it going. And a high degree
of quality control and transparency (national website with every LPG
customer) and moving toward near universal cashless transactions via JAM.
This is substantial job creation and contribution to the national economic
agenda.

LPG is a unique fossil fuel. No one looks or drills for it, but it comes as
a byproduct these days nearly all from natural gas development. With great
expansion of natural gas from shale gas (“fracking”), there is
suddenly a surfeit
of LPG globally – the USA itself has gone in three years from a net
importer to the largest exporter in history. Thus, it could be argued that
LPG is found anyway will be used somewhere no matter what – autos,
petrochemicals, or being flared are the main other uses besides households.
Why not divert as much as possible to its highest social value use, cooking
for the poor? In any case, all projections indicate a large LPG/PNG supply
for decades ahead although, of course, projections in this industry have
sometimes gone astray.

Thus, I end by posing to the biomass stove community the same challenge posed
once to the Indian LPG community. It is not enough just to have a cleaner
cooking technology sitting in the shop, what is needed is to find an
effective way to promote and provide these clean and efficient products to
the 25 million households who will still need them in 2025. The biomass
stove industry is going to have to think well beyond the technology itself,
to how to disseminate at the scale needed and promote consistent usage over
time and reduce use of traditional methods. In the places needed. To the women
who need it.

*Kirk R Smith* is professor of global environmental health at the University
of California Berkeley and a principal of the Collaborative Centre for Air
Pollution Policy in New Delhi. He has worked with advanced biomass stoves
in India and elsewhere since the 1980s and now focuses his research on ways
to enhance usage of clean fuels such as LPG.
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