[Stoves] More clean cooking news from Rwanda

lh cheng lhkind at gmail.com
Sat Feb 24 21:04:13 CST 2018


Communication network have a unique feature, the marginal value is n, and
the total value of network is n*n ( n square ), n is the number of users.
so there is a motivation to achieve bigger number.  Putting it in a simpler
way, ONLY when the network become larger enough, the new user have more
(enough) value when getting in.  The initial users got very little value at
first, so it is very hard to start.

Stoves have no such feature. it work independently. the marginal value is
fixed.

2018-02-25 10:22 GMT+08:00 Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com>:

> Dear Andrew
>
> The cell phone (handset subsidy) method only applied for a short time in
> the beginning. They also for a while charged to collect voice mail
> including for wrong numbers and other idiocies. The customers quickly
> sorted out the providers.
>
> The typical method of communication to rural areas was the telegram over
> which the government had complete control and spying. That is why from the
> beginning the cell phones and towers all had content spying and GPS
> location hardware.  Once 'permitted' hardware was risking permitting phones
> from outside the networks, the producers had to cooperate to ensure all
> phones were hackable and locatable.  Everyone therefore provided their own
> spyware and location information at their own expense. Control by
> government over communications and people was actually extended.
>
> There is no fuel-parallel I can imagine. The only thing I can see is that
> the processed or 'modern' fuels become taxable whereas before it was free.
> In that sense there is a parallel.
>
> The big difference between telegrams and cell phones is the SMS which is
> free to receive. People in town bought phones and gave them to their
> families in order to receive SMS's and coded rings. It was widely used as a
> message: call, ring one, call again, ring three times, call again, ring
> twice, hang up each time. That was looked up on a chart to get a standard
> message at zero cost. Cell phones charge not to make a connection and ring,
> but to terminate one, called a 'termination fee'.
>
> The whole thing was made possible by an investment in 'distribution' which
> is the parallel I see. The ethanol producers have a big task to get
> approved containers and distributors in place. The ethanol itself is not a
> problem, but a viable distribution system is. The hardware (stove) is an
> open market already so the big features will be the usability of the stove,
> its cooking power (usually inadequate) and the cost of cooking.
>
> The really big surprise in the pellet stove business is that the people
> who were collecting wood continue to do so, but take it to the pellet maker
> instead of burning it. The reason they do so is the cooking experience with
> the controllable an stove is far superior to an open fire and the total
> wood collected cam be reduced or eliminated by buying pellets instead of
> trading wood for them. It is a very interesting effort. The phone companies
> and ethanol vendors have no offer in opportunity for participation in the
> supply chain. Because anyone can cut and transport wood, if it accessible
> to them, they can participate, reducing cash outlay to zero.
>
> In a tiny way, an individual can sell charging to other phone users in a
> rural setting. That is 'participation' in what makes it work but it is
> chicken feed compared with the pellet stove example.
>
> I have pasted Nikhil's take on it. The 'Robert' he refers to is Robert van
> der Plas, ex WB and currently one of the advisors of the Kyrgyzstan stove
> pilot.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
>
> +++++
>
> I'd refine the metaphor a bit and say the upfront investment in the
> infrastructure of the  harvesting and processing is more akin to the
> cell network and the stoves equivalent to the latest smartphone.
> >
> > ‎I think it will be used by ethanol vendors soon.
> >
>
> Interesting, presumably the alcohol stoves are much simpler?
>
> The cellphone  firms strategy in the beginning in UKin the early 80s
> was that they not only subsidized the initial cost of the phone but it
> was difficult to buy one;s own phone to connect to the network.
>
> Nowadays it pays me to have cheap monthly access to the network  and
> use a phone I have bought outright, So it will be interesting to see
> how the stove capitalisation compares over time. I'm sure I would be
> tempted to burn things other than the contracted pellets in the stove.
>
> Andrew
>
> +++++
>
> Andrew:
>
> Very few countries have cellphone sales under long-term service contracts.
> And just recovering the price via a long-term fuel contract does nothing
> for expanding the market and spreading the fixed costs. The real game
> starts with upfront support to the supplier - financial and technical
> (which too costs money). Competitive $/Wp subsidies to suppliers were how
> solar home systems were promoted in some Asian countries; the same idea can
> be used for stoves IF there is a credible metric.
>
> Here, avoided carbon (probably measured by lab WBT; nobody gives a damn)
> was the metric. This is a project with C-Dev carbon finance. There was an
> upfront payment for the credits; verification later.
>
> I posted on this some months ago. I liked the project.
>
> Upfront finance for the seller is a far more important innovation than
> technical tweaks.
>
> There are "contextual" factors for this project to "work" in the sense of
> both the operations of fuel preparation and of getting C-Dev finance. And
> neither has to do with what is being cooked and how many DALYs are averted.
> In a nutshell, Rwanda is unique. I don't know any other country where any
> advocate or foreign consultant or a stove salesman has identified and
> understood what would work and how.
>
> In Rwanda, there was not just an energy minister but a finance minister
> who was curious and committed to do something. Because there were people
> they found credible, trustworthy. And the donors too found the government
> competent enough, the supply chains easier to navigate. There was a history
> of success on improved charcoal stoves, going back to late 1980s (Robert),
> also on biogas, at least to the late 1990s (Kigali prison, teeming with
> alleged genocidaires).
>
> To me, Rwanda cooking fuels and stoves market, taken in its entirety over
> the last 30 odd years, is a good example of pointing out what all is wrong
> with not just GACC but the whole "improved cookstove" movement. There are
> some sporadic parallels - Ethiopia in the early 1990s, Kenya for at least
> as long as Rwanda, Uganda and Mozambique for charcoal stoves; some work by
> GERES in Cambodia and Afghanistan that I am aware of - but none had a
> sustained government-level commitment. (All World Bank projects in Africa
> had government buy-in, but not many projects built on the success. GTZ
> tinkered in many places but I don't think it was taken as seriously; just a
> warm welcome and benign, passive tolerance.)
>
> No surprise Kirk Smith declared 6-7 years ago that the term "improved
> stoves" (cooking) be retired, that a controllable flame is what today's and
> tomorrow's household cooks seemed to aspire to, and last year that the
> biomass stove community couldn't practically tie its shoe laces and run. No
> surprise, either, that except for desperate energy and finance ministers
> like Rwanda had 15 years ago, governments find it far easier to subsidize
> electricity and gas than to waste time, money, and energy on a band of
> ragtag road warriors.
>
> There are no - repeat, no - technical problems or solutions for biomass -
> or coal - cooking in the abstract. There is no global issue - environment
> or burden of disease - except in the heads of academics justifying their
> existence by means of peer-reviewed papers and for the bureaucrats at EPA
> whose careers depend on wasting money.
>
> Contextual understanding - not just metrics but also objectives - is all
> that is needed. Cultures and politics trump academics any day.
>
> Here in the Rwanda example, pellets are much better cooking fuel than
> twigs and dung. It is not the combustion efficiency alone but better
> measurement - five fistfuls v. logs and sticks by weight and shape - that
> makes cooking cheaper and more convenient.
>
> Could be better than charcoal for some cooking.
>
> Sorry for speaking. I will go back to sleep.
>
> Nikhil
>
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