[Stoves] Must reed: Re: [stove] ProPublica article out

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Dear Xavier

Good to hear from you as always.

Your summation on global failure (compared with hoped-for results) can be repeated by looking from another angle:

My view is that the main influencers, be they individuals or institutions, display monomaniacalism resulting in not only the failure to achieve their touted goals, but also causing others to fail where they might have succeeded.

Monomania means fanatically going after one thing.

We see:

  *   TLUD as a method of burning promoted because it burns that way (gasificationism)
  *   Char making for non-cooking purposes, i.e. to save the planet
  *   Rocket Stove dimensionalism where ratios are held sacred, more than function
  *   Numerous, spurious health claims, vague attributions and unbelievable causal assertions (ameliorism)
  *   Fuel efficiency preferred over function (thermalism)
  *   LP Gas promotion in a sector dominated by carbon-neutral fuels (unilinealism)
  *   Speculative fund-raising by imputing health benefits based on wonky methods and models (shamanism)
  *   Unapologetic insistence on the use of the WBT, an unpublished, unreviewed test method known to have numerous problems with no skill in forecasting performance in use (desperately trying not to have been wrong or careless)
  *   Using a single fuel with a single moisture content as the ‘standard’ with which to rate absolute or comparative performance (uniformitarianism)
  *   Selling cooking stoves as a solution to deforestation
  *   Selling cooking stoves as a solution to general air pollution
  *   Selling cooking stoves as a solution to family health problems
  *   Selling cooking stoves as a solution to IAP
  *   Selling cooking stoves as a solution to sexual violence in refugee camps
  *   Selling cooking stoves as a solution to drudgery and time inefficiency

One begins to ask, “Is there anything a cooking stove cannot solve?”  An observer might legitimately ask, “If improved cooking stoves are capable of solving so many problems, why don’t we see more people buying and using them?”

Looking at Darfur, we can learn a thing or two because they have had the most interventions. Some homes have been given no less than 10 “improved stoves” by competing agencies (I refer, of course, to the Stoves Wars of Darfur.)  So what gets used? What do women and cooks prefer if you watch them, interview and ask?

Two stoves are popular: One is the all-mud stove developed locally by Practical Action, because it holds the pot properly and cooks using a variety of available biomass materials. The other is the Darfur stove from Berkeley, which when turned upside down makes a good platform for cooking the main type of pancake, which the mud stove does not. Turned the right way up, the all-metal Darfur stove makes a passable charcoal burner though it is not very fuel-efficient as it was designed to burn wood. Charcoal is a preferred fuel because, according to the cooks, “It is cheaper to buy than wood.” Cecil Cook found the same thing in the suburbs of Maputo. Thermal energy from wood was not a good offer, and Shangalane, the hard, expensive charcoal, was by far the best deal in terms of energy delivered per $.

What are the cooks monomaniacally interested in? How well do the proffered “solutions” match the preferences and inclinations of the cooks?

At a minimum, we can say there seems to be a mismatch between what cooks want and do, and how stoves are imagined and manufactured.

Knowing how to burn is not the same as knowing how to cook. (In my case it is the same thing – burning.) Cecil the Cook attended the blowtorch school of cuisine. That requires a skillset I don’t have. When it comes to deep-fried dinner, I will support my local diner.

Regards
Crisp’n’delicious


Dear Paul,

Thanks for sharing this very good paper.
It brings a good reflection upon all those years. Yet it still didn’t answer the question: why didn’t it work?
Because the improved cookstoves were not adopted. But why?

The stoves were not adopted because they were not good enough. The problem is not a problem of adoption, of customers. The stoves were, and still are the problem. If the first Iphone was 3000 USD, with an autonomy of 20 minutes, and very slow when navigating, no one would have bought it -> back to the R&D and engineering department, try again and better.

For the improved cookstove sector:

  *   A lot of investment in combustion and stove R&D was needed: it never happened

  *   The GACC needed to address the problem of the WBT as soon as there were concerns with it. The GACC never did. Even now, July 2018, the first testing protocol on the GACC website is still the WBT. Results: the WBT kept testers and manufacturers into a swamp of under-performing stoves with over-performing results.
  *   Poor products were developed, tested, distributed in villages, and ended-up like Cummins stoves.

One needs to admit his/her mistake, before being able to correct them and move forward. This never happened.
There’s little mystery behind that global failure.

Best,

Xavier



De : Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] De la part de Paul Anderson
Envoyé : jeudi 12 juillet 2018 23:12
À : Stoves and biofuels network
Objet : [Stoves] Must reed: Re: [stove] ProPublica article out

Stovers,

I thank Kirk Smith for getting the ProPublica article to our attention as soon as it became available.

Read.    Perhaps weep.    Work harder.   Learn about the opposition to biomass stoves.

Personally, I am disappointed that there was not a glimmer of recognition of what the TLUD micro-gasifiers HAVE ACCOMPLISHED and have shown to be possible in terms of (A) quite clean cookstoves, (B) STRONG user acceptance, and (C) that carbon credits ARE working with TLUD gasifiers.   The authors (and those who were interviewed and quoted) seem to be totally unaware of the REPORTED IN 2016 success in the Deganga pilot study with 11,000 Champion TLUD stoves (see    www.drtlud.com/deganga2016<https://eur04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drtlud.com%2Fdeganga2016&data=02%7C01%7C%7C8dcb88291c7044c4ebea08d5e8a85add%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636670732132191107&sdata=cUpIKVBlygNDxMFXGOQ1lga71S7No8sAUN23%2F35aRwI%3D&reserved=0>  )    And lesser known is that the  number of households has invreased to about 40,000.   And we are looking for funding for scale up for the larger numbers.

But this article will make it even more difficult to get funding for scale-up of the TLUD stove success story.   However, if it can stop wasted money on the UNsuccessful stove-types that are indicated (but not named) in the article, I am not against that.

This is now mid-2018.   The GACC will claim success to reach 100 million households by 2020 on the basis of LPG stoves in India.   And then what????

Read the article.   It is worthy of some discussion here on the Stoves Listserv..

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<https://eur04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drtlud.com&data=02%7C01%7C%7C8dcb88291c7044c4ebea08d5e8a85add%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636670732132191107&sdata=SCYQ2QHvyjNNMDBZQIPdt6BgUafDMWaNTvp%2BygCMYW8%3D&reserved=0>
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