[Stoves] Radical ideas from Paul and Philip {re: stoves and credits again}

Tue Oct 3 10:00:04 CDT 2017

Crispin:

As a sometime economist, I ought to re-state that a) it is the total cost
that matters, not physical measures of efficiency, and b) costs are
essentially net costs (i.e., net of benefits) and neither all costs nor all
benefits are necessarily observable or uniform across every decision even
for one individual, leave alone all individuals.

Therefore, your claims on efficiency, competition are metaphysics,
ideological or theological.

No serious economist worth his salt has dabbled in the economics of
household fuel choice. (I tore into the "ladder theory" econometrics some
25 years ago; not worth another spike in blood pressure.)

Still, while we are at it - curse the stove metrics and donor mania - let
me simply say charcoal nor LPG delivered costs vary a lot by location,
volume, and year. If I had to pick numbers, if one had to pick up a sack of
charcoal or a 11-15 kg cylinder at a retail point, charcoal is US$ 0.15 -
1.00 per kg and LPG is $0.50 - 4.00 per kg. (My credentials? Seeing LPG
being sold on-site at Band-e-Amir in Afghanistan, summer of 2010. There is
also a World Bank report a few years back by Masami Kojima and consultants
about LPG in several countries.)

So, get over it, whatever "it" bothers you about LPG. There is enough
market in Kenya and elsewhere for LPG, electricity and charcoal, if only
Kirk Smith and Gold Standard get off their objections to solid fuels per se
and to stacking. Renewability of wood is a matter of opportunity costs of
land, water, labor, knowledge, and finance. LPG industry has the financial
and human resource muscle, "big charcoal" can be cultivated as in North
America.

The only market measure is, what the user buys at what price. Price and
income elasticities of demand differ. So do supply elasticities.
Efficiency, emission rates, all that jazz is to sell to bureaucrats and
pundits, in service of people with too much money and too many strange
ideas.

I happen to believe that severe policy failures and capacity constraints
prevent the adoption of ideas such as peach trees in the north around Lake
Turkana. (I have seen that from the sky. Startling.)

A forest economist did a paper - some 20+ years ago, in one or more
Sub-Saharan African countries I think - tracking prices of LPG and
charcoal. If I am not mistaken, he found that charcoal prices lagged LPG
prices with a slight delay. Not implausible, but one cannot do much with
such data without going to the details of industry structure, logistics.

More in *** below.

Nikhil

On Mon, Oct 2, 2017 at 3:43 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Nikhil, loved the pic.?
>
> It would be interesting to compare the delivered cost of LPG energy per MJ
> in the pot with charcoal. In both cases production inefficiencies would be
> ignored as they are large and only really matter if it affects the price.
>
> A really good charcoal stove can compete in the same realm as a cheap
> propane stove in terms of thermal efficiency, and that is before any large
> investment is made in processed char fuels like pelletization.
>

*** A household charcoal stove will never be as flexible in power as a gas
or electric stove. Minimize the cooking time; it's not like there is
nothing else to do. (Except for rich foodies like me.) ***

>
> ‎I think that truck can carry a heck of a lot of energy in one load. A
> twenty ton load would be about 600 gigaJoules. That is about the same
> energy as is contained in 13.3 tons of propane, but the propane needs metal
> cylinders greatly increasing the total transported mass.
>

*** True, but irrelevant. Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden that ships
came loaded from India and returned empty from Boston. So they loaded ice -
from Walden pond - at the bottom of the ships. That ice was then carried by
train from Mumbai and delivered to the mansion of a wealthy man in
Ahmedabad, my city in India. ***

Anyone have a metal mass per kg fuel mass number?
>

*** Varies by cylinder type and size. For the Indian cylinder for 14.2 kg
LPG, empty weight is 15.3 kg. See  https://www.quora.com/Why-in-
India-are-the-weights-of-LPG-cylinders-14-2-15-2-etc.

While there, also click on Watch How Gas Is Stolen before Gas Cylinder Gets
Delivered to Your Home and How to Avoid?
<http://sudharjao.com/2017/watch-how-gas-is-stolen-before-gas-cylinder-gets-delivered-to-your-home-and-how-to-avoid/>
I have seen street-side filling of LPG in Bamyan, Afghanistan. No wonder

>
> So in terms of transport alone, charcoal is far more efficient than LPG.
> Remember the LPG empties have to be transported back. The charcoal truck
> can take goods to the rural areas on the return trip.
>
> As a renewable product, charcoal might get an extra nod as well. ‎If a
> rational system-wide examination of the potential for charcoal as a
> domestic fuel were to be conducted, it might bring surprising ideas to the
> table. A charcoal fueled fan stove would be small, powerful, controllable
> and very clean burning.
>

***  Of course. Now a question -- are there TLUD charcoal kilns? Or, would
a fan-stove with charcoal stove make a good complement to a char-making
TLUD with wood? Not for the bottom quarter of income groups in India but
the middle quintile of rural Africa?

Technologies exist; market chains are key. Kirk Smith's second epiphany is
quite accurate. I don't think he would grudge a billion dollars to biomass
cookstove business if we only figured out how to spend it, without the
TC-285 song and dance about Tiers and ratings. Instead of inspiring
"aspirations", EPA in conjunction with WHO have dealt a severe setback to
the hopes of the poor from GACC. ***

> Who represents 'Big Charcoal'?
>

*** Well, to be honest,  a mix of politically powerful and wealthy people,
corrupt and violent gangs, and child labor. I remember once meeting a
high-ranked government official whose son had fallen off a charcoal truck
and died. Design of an efficient, safe charcoaling logistical system is not
easy. Poverty corrupts everything. An LPG company and its facilities are
easier to regulate, there is a market for the fuel and the stove. If you
remember a stove brand Primus (not beer), look up
https://primus.us/pages/about-primus. If Primus or Coleman got in charcoal
stove business in the developing world, they could even start exporting to
rural OECD customers who care about bioenergy. I have high hopes for
electricity, LPG and charcoal for the household market. ***

>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
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