[Stoves] Advocacy action: Ask the GACC to stop promoting the WBT (Xavier Brandao)

[Nikhil Desai]

Tom: I am writing from a different e-mail address. I do not have access to the web and the other e-mail address. Please post this to the list.  
--------------
Xavier: I have very limited connectivity these days. I am in deep rural India, collecting stories about cooking and deaths, and enjoying wood and leaf smoke in the open. 

I reiterate strong support for junking WBT for household biomass cookstoves and hope everybody who has suffered by GACC's - and before that, EPA's - heavy-handed insistence on WBT, or on Approvecho's equipment or spurious certificates, to record grievances as soon
as the veneer of pseudo-official approval is stripped off. 

I looked into testing for improved stove programs 35 years ago and have now and then seen stove improvement projects, often failures but oftener too small and too context-specific to generalize lessons one way or the other. But one impression remained all along - that lab testing with WBT was a rather dumb. 

When performance measures were reduced to fuel efficiency and CO, PM 2.5 emission rates, the dumb became insane. 

The metrics, targets and default protocols - different versions of WBT - of the IWA have all to be justified. The only reason they exist is groupthink - due to lethargy or vested interests. The "temporary placeholder" was a ruse. It was a 500 pound gorilla, now an albatross. 

Which is why I think all WBT lab results to date be junked. There may be some value in collecting data on those interventions where lab WBT results are accompanied by field tests using the same version of the WBT one year after at least 1,000 such stoves have been put to use. 

That will make your case, rather!

Let the vested interests scream. 

1. The FIRST question, in junking WBT - or other tests - or adopting another test - is whether the performance metrics in the IWA are appropriate and adequate. 

There is no generally applicable rationale for fuel efficiency. None. There is no intrinsic value in saving dung, straw, saw dust except in the context of competing economic choices. 

Nor any for hourly emission rates, because there is no general translation from emission rates and exposures, nor from average daily exposures to any particular DALY. Again, it is the cook's economic choice. 

It is a question for cooks, in the context of competing choices of fuels, utensils, cooking practices, in turn the contexts of food ingredients, nutrition requirements, the rhythms of household or paid employment, allocation of time, money and brains. (Yes, even illiterate cooks have brains, whether they bother to show or not.)

2. The SECOND question is, what authority did the EPA have in selecting any test method or equipment for biomass cook stoves not used in the US. Some discretion for research purpose is possible, but not for regulatory purpose. And if the TC 285 recommendations are not to timely be adopted by the US - which we know to be the case a priori - why is ANSI co-chairing the TC 285?

I know this is heresy to the priesthood of "stove science". I don't know what ETHOS is, how the Lima Agreement was engineered or how the International Workshop Agreement was drafted, signed upon and what the signatories were charged with in terms of some "interim" output in three years. 

But we don't need to know. Nothing tangible has been cooked up, with or without the WBT, that we know of in five years. The fundamental question is, how did a private organization - the UN Foundation, masquerading as GACC - come to get into the intergovernmental process of ISO?

3. If my thinking is correct, the "hand over" of PCIA to GACC has no validity. Anything and everything GACC may have done in demanding the use of WBT - or US test equipment, training, etc., is disputable at the first impression.
 
If the original or continuing standing of GACC or ANSI  at the TC 285 is in question, so is everything else about the TC. 

I think non-US governments should reconsider their participation in this TC and their contribution to GACC. 


Nikhil Desai


> On Mar 13, 2017, at 11:30 PM, 
> 1. Re: Advocacy action: ask the GACC to stop promoting the WBT
> (Xavier Brandao)
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 10:12:43 +0100
> From: Xavier Brandao <xvr.brandao at gmail.com>
> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
> <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Advocacy action: ask the GACC to stop promoting
> the WBT
> Message-ID: <c048b39a-e862-46d3-1fb5-1424444b045d at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
> 
> Dear Ranyee,
> 
> I wanted to get back to you, you didn't answer to my last email of the 
> 20/01 (see below).
> 
> Could you please let us know what is preventing the GACC, RKTCs, and ISO 
> working groups to take a final decision on the WBT and decide if it is 
> reliable or not, and therefore should be used for stove development and 
> programmatic purposes? What are the remaining questions?
> 
> You also mentioned the round robin testing which is, I believe, underway.
> Maybe you gave more information about it at the ETHOS meeting earlier 
> this year, I don't know.
> I searched on the GACC website, on the ETHOS website, and on the 
> internet as well, I wasn't able to find information about it.
> 
> Could you please let us know:
> 
> * what is the round robin testing about, and who is involved in it?
> * when did it start and when will it be finished?
> * how much budget is dedicated to it?
> 
> Thanks in advance and looking forward to your answer,
> 
> Xavier
> 
> 
>> On 1/20/17 01:17, Xavier Brandao wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Ranyee,
>> 
>> Thanks a lot for answering so quick.
>> 
>> It is good to hear that the GACC is aware of the issue, and that there 
>> are people working on it at the moment in the ISO committee.
>> 
>> But how long will it take?
>> 
>> I was present in The Hague, for the IWA workshop, in February 2012. At 
>> that time, a few persons in the audience, including Crispin, agreed to 
>> sign the agreement only under the conditions that the protocols, 
>> especially the WBT, are discussed and challenged, and their validity 
>> assessed. The ISO TC 285 would be working on it.
>> 
>> That was 5 years ago.
>> 
>> The papers I quoted to Ron date from the last few years. The authors 
>> can be contacted.
>> 
>> It seems to me, from what I read, that there is something like 95% 
>> certainty that the WBT is highly flawed, and as Crispin said, 
>> unfixable. It has evolved a lot during a decade, several versions, but 
>> the very core issues are still there.
>> 
>> With all the documentation we have now, the burden of proof lies on 
>> the WBT side. What we should be taking now is the precautionary 
>> principle. That is the most reasonable decision. If something has high 
>> chances to be harmful, it should be put aside. Indecision is a 
>> decision. Inaction, is an action already.
>> 
>> Now, all the information needed is at hand, it is in those studies, 
>> well documented. Could you please let us know:
>> 
>> ?what is preventing the GACC, RKTCs, and ISO working groups to take a 
>> final decision on the WBT? What are the remaining questions?
>> 
>> Thanks in advance,
>> 
>> Xavier
>