[Stoves] Energy poverty and shack fires

Fri May 12 00:06:57 CDT 2017

Cecil:

Unlike USAID, the World Bank does not distribute. It LENDS, with a moderately guarded control of disbursements except in "budget support". It is the government's responsibility as well as the prerogative to manage procurement and keep the records. 

So your analogy doesn't apply. 

Of course, Goldman Sachs can put together a $2 billion "impact investment fund" together with Ivanka, and ex-hippies can join hands with ex-Viet Cong, ex-guerrillas, current Naxalites, etc. to borrow from this fund, buy stoves, sell them (at gun's point, if needed) and the world will be peaceful. 

Or at least, clean. Certified by ISO. 

Unless MOAB or mortar fire pollutes the air and kills a few thousand people prematurely. 

To assign excessive premature mortality only to warfare and operator errors, we will get Ajay Pilarisetti. 

As for World Bank in Afghanistan, the world's largest solar PV "home systems" was underway in 2005-10 period with mediocre technical oversight. It was not an "energy" sector project but a multi-donor rural rehabilitation project. The systems didn't function properly because of "cheap" imports. 

There is a lesson there - both technology and supply chains need to be mature enough for such retail goods interventions to "catch on". No matter how much the intellectual ruling class in the capitals of moneyed powers pontificate and waste time and money in the name of the poor or of Mommy Earth, when rubber meets the road, their theories burn away. 

The World Bank did finance several stoves projects during the 1990s. The next generation of "domestic energy" technologies will take design and hand holding by people like Crispin. 

Not ex-EPA high-flying balloons for the Taleban. Or Somali warlords. (I met one ~24 years ago. Somalis made charcoal without deforestation. I wonder if GACC has a project there. There is a gas field nearby with a lot of liquids.)

Nikhil

Nikhil Desai
+91 909 995 2080
Skype: nikhildesai888

> On May 12, 2017, at 8:35 AM, cec1863 at gmail.com wrote:
> 
> Dear CPP, Nikhil‎, et al,
> 
> I heard about a strategy for distributing seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides in S Vietnam during the War. USAID was so tainted by its political mission in support of the American puppet regime in S Vietnam that it's Vietnamese field workers could not give away ag input packages to villagers. Why? Because accepting anything from American agents was viewed by the VC and the North Vietnamese army as tantamount to collaborating with the Yankee invaders and colonialists. Collaboration got the sellouts killed at nite by the VC underground who ruled the countryside. 
> 
> I have it on good authority that the ag input packages piled up on the docks at Danang until the vietnamese "mafia" began stealing and selling the input packages to the peasant farmers. Some sensible official in USAID realized the gangs in Danang were doing the work of USAID better than the American development agency and what's more they were handling the distribution of tons of ag inputs ‎all over the country at no cost to USAID! 
> 
> I'm told that USAID would deliberately leave containers unguarded on the docks when it wanted them distributed far and wide  to villagers. Allowing the poor and their suppliers to steal kowledge and products constitutes a distributional strategy  where theft serves a much higher purpose.
> 
> May I suggest you allow your stoves to be stolen by the Taliban and distributed at no cost to the World Bank to families in need of winter heating and year round cooking in those provinces where they rule the rural areas. You want the metal workers in Taliban dominated areas to learn how to make your radically improved heating and cook stoves on their own using scrap metal from blown up and wrecked military vehicles and hardware (weapons into stoves).
> 
> It's a thought od a way to keep you safe from Al Qaeda and the Taliban and the Mullas etc. 
> 
> Am I off my rocker again? Encouraging enterprising metal workers to steal radically improved stoves seems like sensible way of getting improved stoves into regions that are off limits because of warfare and institutional breakdown!!
> 
> Cecil the Cook
> 
> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
> From: Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
> Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2017 6:35 PM
> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
> Reply To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Energy poverty and shack fires
> 
> Dear Nikhil
>  
> >Of course, it struck me that LPG - despite whatever casualties - marketed better all around than dung stoves.
>  
> OK, that is reasonable, but whoever tried to make a much improved dung burning stove? Prakti did, and the KG2.5 is a dung burner with far better performance than the traditional stove.
>  
> To put a number to that claim, the efficiency of the KG30 is about 2.5 times higher than the traditional one it replaces. I visited a lady outside Osh City who said she has to feed the dung burning stove every 15 minutes. The KG 2.5 can burn for 4 hours at least without being touched. Some say 5 hours.
>  
> As nothing (as far as we know) is making it into Afghanistan from southern Tajikistan, we are discussing how to enter the Afghan market. There are organisations with pan-border activities and we plan to use them as knowledge channels to share these simple stove designs.
>  
> So, I expect that better dung burning stoves that heat and cook will enter the Afghan market as early as this year. We will link them to Tajikistan-based knowledge centres and actors.
>  
> Regards
> Crispin trying to be practical
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Stoves mailing list
> 
> to Send a Message to the list, use the email address
> stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org
> 
> to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page
> http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org
> 
> for more Biomass Cooking Stoves,  News and Information see our web site:
> http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20170512/c8073a9c/attachment.html>