[Stoves] Follow-up about clean biomass fuels

Sun Oct 8 20:05:41 CDT 2017

Dear Paul

You letter is OK, and takes us a step forward. In answer to the question:

“How can she, a prominent and supposedly well informed person, be so uninformed about the abilities of modern advanced cookstoves that use wood and other dry biomass?    She needs to be better informed.”

I propose that she needs to be ‘better advised’. I doubt most people involved in policy are given much leeway about what to promote.

This is a very practical matter: things need to be funded and funds are allocated on the bases of who can scream ‘”Wolf” the loudest and most urgently.  Unlike the Boy and the Wolf story, there is never a time when crying “Wolf!” fails to work. There is always another village in which it works.

The essential challenge of your letter is that it demands the opportunities and technologies and combinations thereof be treated in a balanced, rational and system-wide manner. That is not happening, not to say that it couldn’t. It just doesn’t.

Look how far the false narratives have done down their respective rabbit holes: catastrophic climate change, oil running out in 5 years, the entire ocean is dying, all the forests are disappearing, everyone in a wood burning kitchen is going to be killed by wood smoke. Coal smoke will kill them five times over.  I read just this morning is a debunking piece that “indoor air smoke kills 5 million people per year and causes all manner of intestinal diseases”. Even the de-bunkers are conned by the 4.2m premature death quote, and inflate it for rounding off neatly.

There is a paper out just now that uses aDALY calculations! I think that is a first. They claim to avoid for particular individuals, a national statistical attribution by leaping (with faith) into the stove replacement business. Of course it promotes gas. Clean combustion doesn’t exist.

So you have to be very practical in your examples: demonstrate clean burning for stoves that people want to use. That is step number one. If you tie it to soil and char and shipping lumps around, you are definitely endangering the changes of your first goal. A fuel-poor city could simply ban the practice because it will require additional cutting of trees or biomass, and direct that all char be directed to the fuels market. Then you are dead, policy-wise.

If you want to create some gasifiers that are able to burn the whole fuel to demonstrate a dramatic reduction in consumption while simultaneously reducing indoor air PM to a small % of its former value, I can help you. You don’t need help with the char-making variety. There are choices.

There is nothing wrong with char-making then char-burning – both are very clean processes is a wide set of circumstances. You have identified materials problems with burning char. You have issues with air control switching from char making to char burning. I identified the ‘paper burning’ air vent solution which you thought was a great idea at the time but didn’t implement. Perhaps taking a broader view of what the market needs, then touting char-burying as a option will get you further faster. People’s heads are not in a system-wide transformative all-at-one-time space.

Ruling out, as you do right at the beginning, coal burning in TLUD’s obviously limits your access to hundreds of millions of homes because that is what people use for cooking. Many homes use multiple fuels, actually. A successful model in Kyrgyzstan past year was a three-fuel stove that has different setting for different fuels. Coal is only used for space heating intermittently on very cold nights (-30).  That is what people want to buy and use. Most people don’t want ‘lessons’, they want ‘solutions’.

So…provide some.

Supportively
Crispin

From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Paul Anderson
Sent: 8-Oct-17 11:26
To: Stoves and biofuels network <Stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: [Stoves] Follow-up about clean biomass fuels

Stovers,

Over a week ago I sent a message (attached as a Word document) with this title and first paragraph:
Recognize Clean Cooking with Renewable Solid Fuels 2017-09-29

We need to deliver a message to the world that any discussion of access to clean fuel sources for cooking MUST include recognition that renewable solid fuels (mainly wood / pellet / chips, but including some forms of agro-refuse) are also highly clean burning in modern advanced cookstoves.  So, the topic is correctly stated as "clean cookstoves and fuels", but it is often reduced to be only "clean fuels," which is very misleading.

Is this not one of the top five issues of this Stoves Listserv????

Well, the response has been totally UNDERwelming.  TWO.   Yes, a total of 2 people sent comments directly to me (without wanting to become involved) and ZERO comments on the Stoves Listserv.

Does that tell us something about ourselves?   Maybe:
1.  People  do not read the Stoves List messages.
2.  My message content is not clear, or maybe too long, or maybe something else.
3.  The topic is really not of interest to biomass Stovers.
4.  Biomass Stovers have given up and now accept biomass being regarded as a "dirty fuel".
5.  Readers are in such total agreement with what I wrote that they feel no need to comment.
6.  Something else:   ________ fill in the blank _________________
7.  All of the above.

So, I am writing again.   (Stupid Anderson, he will never learn.)

I conclude with what is at the end of my document from last week:
7.  What next????
a.  Discussion will be at the Stoves Listserv.  (If comments are sent directly to me at   psanders at ilstu.edu<mailto:psanders at ilstu.edu>  , I might post them with your name attached.)

b.  Who will help carry this message forward?   Please speak up.  Some assistance is needed.

c.  To whom should this message be sent (as is or improved):   One person is Sophie Edwards<https://www.devex.com/news/authors/1253453>   the journalist who wrote the 18 September 2017 item about Rachel Kyte..    And also send to Rachel Kyte.

d.  Perhaps a "Declaration of Clean Cooking with Wood" could be prepared, and presented for endorsement / adoption by organizations and persons.  (Suggest a better name??)

e.  Whatever is next, we need to utilize the format and facilities of the GACC, including the Forum in Delhi.  This is what the GACC is all about:   With emphasis on the word CLEAN, we are all seeking to have clean cookstoves reaching even those people who only have biomass fuels for daily cooking.  And this can be done with existing methods, etc., that will be further improved with the feedback from the woodgas stove users.

Paul

--

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD

Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu<mailto:psanders at ilstu.edu>

Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072

Website:  www.drtlud.com<http://www.drtlud.com>
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