[Stoves] Fallout from ProPublica piece on the $75 m boondoggle

[Nikhil Desai]

 THE WIN-WIN MIRAGE - A $75 million attempt to end indoor air pollution
ended up siding with fossil fuels
<https://qz.com/1327615/why-does-the-global-alliance-for-clean-cookstoves-promote-fossil-fuels/>
-
Akshat Rathi,  Quartz, 14 July 2018

Quartz is a rather brash, pretentious webzine by and for millennials who
have yet to grow up. It seems to have a wide readership and a big
geographic footprint. So it is significant that one of its reporters picked
up Sarah Morrison's ProPubica story on GACC and gave it this twist.

The author supposedly has a PhD in Chemistry from Oxford and a BTech from
ICT, Mumbai, but writes in the most facile manner:

" After spending many of those millions in grants to designers and
academics, the alliance was able to offer some cookstoves but they hardly
reduced particulate emissions ."


I don't know any evidence of GACC "spending many of those millions in
grants to designers and academics." This is a canard.

As is the claim, "some cookstoves but they hardly reduced particulate
emissions ."

There is no evidence whether they did or did not. You can't argue that
people didn't like the stoves enough touse them and that the stoves hardly
reduced particulate emissions (except in the trivial sense).

The author then claims,

" Burning propane produces greenhouse gases, which will eventually
accelerate climate change, but in the short term it cuts particulate
pollution, which will have immediate benefits on people’s health.  "


He is illiterate. Kirk Smith and colleagues pointed out in 2000 that GHG
emissions on useful energy basis are LOWER for propane than for
uncontrolled woodfuel combustion, so long as all VOCs are also counted
along with CO2.

Smith and his colleagues said "If one were to put carbon in the atmosphere
anyway, CO2 is the least harmful of all species, from both climate and
health viewpoints. The policy implications of this finding are profound."

Indeed. Amen.

The argument of fuel fetishists - renewable biomass versus fossil LPG (or
fossil-fired electricity) - is facetious. No real cook gives a damn. There
is too much individual-level optimization of food, nutrition, time, water,
jobs, childcare, money going on in different contexts of time and space to
bother with the beancounters of efficiency or GWP. (Besides, I would use
20- or even 5-year GWPs any day, to reflect poor people's discount rates.
Not something stovers give any thought about."

GACC was fueled partly  by hubris, partly by cynical exploitation of
Hillary's name. (I don't believe US government gave $50 m to GACC. Seems
like another piece of sloppy reporting by Morrison.)

I wonder who picked the "100 million clean cookstoves by 2020" target.
Jacob Moss? Leslie Cordes? Tim Wirth?

Back in July 2009, I was contacted by a consulting firm that had an
assignment from "the Secretary's Office" to do a "feasibility report" on "1
million women entrepreneurs" to sell "100 million" - BUT, if I recall
correctly - stoves AND solar LED lanterns. I was surprised then that it was
not from USAID but from the Secretary's office. I laughed off both the
targets for entrepreneurs and stoves, but suggested that 100 million solar
chargers for lighting and phones was doable and desirable.

Monies are spent. Not on designers and academics, at least not by GACC. By
EPA, Winrock, who knows? For all its failures, GACC was designed to fail.
No surprise that Radha Muthiah and Sumi Mehta have left. The rest have to
fulfill the contracts and go for greener biomass.

Nikhil










------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*
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