[Stoves] Stove Conf in Poland this month

[Nikhil Desai]

Paul: 

Do you want me to draft a communique from this CCAC - Climate and Clean Air Coalition - summit?

Two versions - what I think it should say and what I predict it would say. 

Pro bono and private. No leaks. 

One hint: No CDR. 

I am off the web, but look for a report by WHO Europe on heating options. Circa 2015, Zoe Chaffee and Kirk Smith among the co-authors if I remember correctly. Advises against unprocessed solid fuels - as if fuels have little devils in them that are removed by the gods of processing. But processed coal is acceptable. 

Reality is accepted with qualification, unlike the fiction of premature mortality, which is sold without reservations. 

In some extremely cold regions - say, parts of Afghanistan or Mongolia, two places I have visited and researched - biomass other than dung is not available plentifully. Coal is (Mongolia) or can be (Afghanistan). 

But bishops of global environment and archbishops of global health despise coal. And other fossil fuels, no matter what the economic benefits. 

Kirk Smith is an exception. Not only did he write "In Praise of Petroleum" and "Power to the People" (including, implicitly, all electricity that could be put to use in induction stoves), he unabashedly argues for LPG (as Ron has now discovered), and has written (I am paraphrasing) that, at the margin, air quality health gains in northern China will come more from reduction in small-scale (residential, commercial) direct use of coal (or all traditional SFU) than further tightening of controls on coal-fired power plants. 

I agree on the general point, just that I think the World Bank work Crispin has guided in Kyrgyzstan points to the potential for tremendous air quality gains right at every home and neighborhood at much lower cost than electric heating. (The market for these new heating stoves is yet to be proven, as also their long-term performance, I grant.)

I once did some rough calculations that using some very crude emission factors and 20-year GWPs for all warning GHGs, the year 2000 global warming damage from traditional biomass cooking and heating was roughly of the same order as the entire coal-fired power generation of China that year. (No adjustment for cooling aerosols from coal or biomass, nor for carbon sequestration in China or elsewhere. As far as I am concerned, the world's gross increment of photosynthesis sequesters CO2 from US and Chinese coal-fired power plants and none from poor people's cookstoves. I hate it when physicists become accountants and even then only of PJ and PTCO2e, not of dinars and dollars. Don't even ask how the e in CO2e is cooked up; depends on how you define global warming.)

I think I even argued that substituting all Indian cooking and heating by electricity 
- at the the then-average fuel mix and some 10% line losses - led to a reduction in GHG loading, wherefore the FCCC Annex 1 countries should pay the agreed incremental costs of financing the Indian power sector. 

I wish GACC was in existence then. I might have been an ambassador for "clean cookstoves". 

Coming back to coal stoves, I think the BC reductions from new coal stove designs for Mongolia, China, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan could earn enough carbon revenue to sell themselves. 

Oh. Since they are probably already cost-effective, no carbon revenues or GEF grants, which are reserved for losers, i.e., otherwise non-marketable products and services. And Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan may not qualify for CDM. 

I suspect that in a given locality, coal is often easier to work with than biomasses for long-duration heating. (In Alaska, wind-diesel electricity is better than solid fuels to melt ice for drinking water.)

Either way, we don't have to convince Kirk Smith that "truly health protective" heating stoves for these very cold areas of the world can be made using coal or biomass. I think this WHO Europe report made no mention of the WHO Geneva/ISO TC 285 humbug of Tier 4 hourly average emission rate target. No judgement of "health protection" options can be done without regard to context, which includes relative economics. 

We do have a challenge, Crispin, in showing that "clean enough" solid fuel heating stoves and heat-only boilers of different sizes and readily adaptable by different users can be delivered, used, and transform the living environment of the poor and un-connected, intensely vulnerable populations. We don't need BAMG certified aDALYs. 

GACC can help. By raising and spending a billion $ for 100 million such people. 

Or it can get out of the way, and keep boiling water, cooking Chef Jose Andres' dinners. 

$ 10 per head grant for the poor for a stove that lasts 5-10 winters versus $300+ per head supper once. 

Improving the human environment vs the global environment. 

I for one would take the dinner, if GACC offers. 

But it should offer you and others an opportunity to make a case for biomass heating stoves appropriate for those contexts. 

Nikhil

PS: I think CCAC is another Hillary innovation. (I was enthusiastic about it at the time, as I also was about GACC). It has some parallel with annual COPs for FCCC and Kyoto Protocol. If its funding came from USG or the UN or FCCC, its future may be darker and colder compared to six months ago. 



> On May 2, 2017, at 7:59 PM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Stovers,
> 
> This link will give you the program, and one (of several) title that says:   The Heating+Cooking and Coal Heatstoves Summit.    So there is at least a significant part of the agenda about COAL.   What will be said?
> 
> http://ccacoalition.org/en/events/stoves-summit-addressing-black-carbon-and-other-emissions-stoves-globally?utm_source=May%202017%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=May%2017%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email
> 
> Agenda mentions
> Tami Bond (keynote speaker)
> GACC
> Mongolia (?? Crispin's co-workers ??)
> and much more.
> 
> TWO points:
> 1.  Why has this not been mentioned before on the Stoves Listserv??
> 2.  I hope that someone who attends can give us pointers to key presentations, etc.   Specifically, I would like to know if the WOODGAS (TLUDs etc) stoves even get mentioned, and if so, in what way or context.
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> ____________