[Stoves] News: National Geographic on promotion of gas stoves over improved woodstoves - in Guatemala

[Ronal W. Larson]

List:

	Since my last response to a Crispin said I agreed with zero of his comments,  I expect a few of you wonder how I score this one.  I give it a score of about 10 or 20%  -  but I’ll ask others to join in the scoring - as shown line by line below.   


> On Sep 4, 2017, at 9:59 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Gordon
>  
> - What are people trying to do?
>  
> Invent cool stuff and get it adopted to help save the world.

	RWL1.  Because the rest of Crispin’s responses to Gordon seem negative on what is happening in the stove world,  this one might be also. Personally, I find zero fault with anyone trying to  “help save the world”.   So if ‘people” on this list are starting with the goal of saving the world then thank goodness they are.  Often new stove work now is for climate reasons;  for me it was initially saving forests,  now I stay in this game for climate reasons. 
	But if Crispin was trying to be positive, I can agree;  I see this commendable (“save the world”) motivation for many on this list.   Can’t give Crispin too many points here since this positive answer doesn’t seem to fit with all the remaining.  

>  
> - What problems are getting in the way of your success?
>  
> Ignorance about how to invent cool stuff and get it adopted.

	[RWL2:   Disagree.  Saying that stove designers (and this list membership) are ignorant is decidedly inaccurate.

>  
> - What collaborations are possible?
>  
> The best one would be for the ‘stovers’ to approach social scientists to find out in much clearer detail why people behave the way they do when they use domestic energy and apply it in their lives.

	[RWL3 : Definitely the stove world would be better off with more input from social scientists, but you don’t have to start collaborations there. When Paul Anderson and I went to the recent stove meeting at the University of Iowa, the largest group might have been social scientists.  Kirk Smith (not a stove designer) gave a great talk.   Social scientists can be (and are) the initiators of dialog - when problems are serious.
 	It is clear that third world stoves have big advantage of a) being (first cost) cheap, b) easy to keep going and c) can provide a wide range of power levels.  Horrible when using wet wood or when population demands exceed supply, and always when you consider health and climate issues.  When your income is such that much of it goes for energy, and you must operate with a high discount rate, then using far away wood resources and a 3-stone fire is likely a reasonable (but still not good nor an optimum) choice.  See also below on the need for "stovers” to be talking to policy decision makers.  Nowhere near enough money in the budgets of some of the poorest countries is going to improve health conditions - a good part of which are known to be caused by ill-performing biomass cookstoves.
	In reading up for the eclipse,I learned a lot about Thomas Edison, who was a a minor celebrity at the time of the similar 1878 eclipse.  I’m pretty sure Edson had little help from social scientists in his initial ideas.  Maybe later in getting some to commercial success.  Social scientists unwilling to ask about stoves saving time or making money for users are not going to have stoves help with our present forest, soil, and climate problems.  Similarly, I have to mention solar lanterns and cell phone sales successes that are inherent in the technologies.  They just fortuitously happened to help our target populations, albeit after many years, because of price declines that happened much sooner than anyone predicted even ten years earlier.  That can happen with new stove technologies as well.

>  
> There is usually a gulf between the wanna-be designers and the potential users, as large as the gap between marketing people and the self-same designers.

	[RWL4:   This manages to denigrate both designers and marketers - with (as usual) no citations.  My experience this year in Iowa city disproves this. There were many excellent social scientists working on stove issues.  Some of them understand char-making stove benefits, especially when shown them by Paul Anderson.  The ISO process has a social science document coming along that could be quite valuable.
	If this 4th observation comes from Crispin’s own observations, then I am sorry he has had this experience.  I see no reason to believe that either “gulf/gap” is a “usual” truth.

>  
> A three-way collaboration between marketing, design/engineering and behavioral scientists would produce products that would naturally attract funding.

	RWL5:  Not necessarily true.   I can agree that all three groups might help attract funding - but I don’t believe the word “naturally”.  Specifically,  TLUDs supply a much needed CDR (carbon dioxide removal) function - likely at the least cost.   But essentially zero stove funding is around for that function (or any other way to make biochar or any CDR approach).  There is large agreement that money is due from wealthy developed countries for the CDR function - and those funds will largely end up in developing countries (because of lower labor costs, better growing conditions, and generally poorer soils).  That funding must and will happen.  But not only from the efforts of stove design teams - no matter how skilled.
	The funding for GACC came from policy-oriented groups - especially Hillary Clinton.  Some of the best critics of (and advocates for better) biomass stoves are health experts.  Many more specialists need to be involved - doctors, economists, geologists, geographers, soil scientists, etc.

>  
> At the moment people seek funding first, technical solutions second, marketing expertise third, and a deep understanding of the users last.

	[RWL6:  This also seems too gross a simplification.  There probably are some stove design teams where this applies - but I have seen almost the opposite on this list.  For my case, working in Sudan (which has been ruined by most cooks using char) brought me into today’s (still not understood) char-making stove world.  The technical (char-making) solution came after realizing how harmful charcoal cooking is. I have never felt it appropriate to get into searching for funding.  I admit today’s personal response to Crispin is in the marketing category - at first to save forests but now mostly for climate reasons.  I would have zero skills at marketing a specific stove.  I wager there are almost as many permutations of Crispin’s four-part sequence as there are list members.  I honestly don’t know who Crispin includes with the word “people”.
	
>  
> Hence, the current mess.

	[RWL7:   Obviously a “mess” is in the eye of the beholder; I see little “mess”.  We now have a well-run and successful GACC - after three quarters of this list life (15 years) had passed.  We have an ISO-285 process (with endorsement of a WBT that values charcoal production) that is clearly helping to produce improved stoves.  We have Gordon West joining and asking all the right questions (unfortunately getting some disputable answers).  Thank goodness Gordon and Bill Knauss have endorsed the char-making and biochar options that Crispin maybe thinks is behind the supposed “mess”.

	The stove world is making progress.  It is in large part due to many on this list (even though they [often understandably] say too little).  We should especially thank Tom Miles and Andrew Heggie for funding and managing a list that is making a difference.  It will make even more, as stove users and makers join the many other constituencies arguing for making CDR a top option - with char-making stoves providing a part (and the early part) of that answer  (I’m admittedly inserting some marketing here).

Ron

>  
> Regards
> Crispin
>  
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