[Stoves] TLUD stoves and tests

[Paul Anderson]

Nikhil,

I am working on solving the problem of cookstoves that use biomass, 
specifically the acceptance and widespread use of TLUD stoves.   Not yet 
out of ideas.  And still aiming very very high.  No guarantees of 
success, but still in the game.

Paul

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072
Website:  www.drtlud.com

On 7/18/2018 9:49 PM, Nikhil Desai wrote:
> Paul:
>
> The context should have suggested that I had in mind " Lima, Hague 
> signatories". These are the people who signed on to the adventure that 
> is ISO which recognized "an urgent market need" for the IWA and 
> promised new test protocols and standards so that the multi-billion 
> dollar market materialized out of thin air.
>
> If not ALL have given up, show me who can take up the challenge of, 
> say, "100 million by 2025" for usable, acceptable stoves with primary 
> biomass around the world.
>
> GACC Two? Suppose GACC is dead. What next?
>
> I will write a separate note in reply to the discussion between you 
> and Crispin about what went wrong, but I think that, apart from some 
> assist by ESMAP (including for the CSI project) and some donor 
> projects on residential heating stoves (coal, of course), _it is the 
> donor class that now stands at the risk of having no towel around._
>
> GACC was a towel for THEM (DfID, the prime case; also Dutch and 
> Scandinavian donors and even multi-laterals). GACC covered them by 
> spreading the message that something was being done and will be done 
> BIG SCALE (sorry for being Trumpian here in writing in caps).
>
> People who had seen such dramas before snickered; Radha Muthiah was 
> incredible or non-credible. ETHOS had a different pathos than getting 
> and spending money.
>
> And soon enough, GACC flipped. Not only did it become an LPG 
> propagandist - as did Kirk Smith, though LPG didn't need any publicity 
> except to persuade some governments to change particularly regressive 
> policies. (These things are usually done in private, so I don't give 
> GACC or Smith any credit for LPG policy changes in India or elsewhere.)
>
> It became a tool of EPA, which had originally ran PCIA and supported 
> biomass stoves - and the WHO cabal to which it went and got it to 
> change the SDG metrics - % of households cooking and heating with 
> solid fuels had to come down.
>
> Yes, solid fuels are damned. Thanks to Kirk Smith. Whatever happens to 
> GACC, it is now committed to pushing LPG and electricity. Just read 
> how GACC and Energia manipulated health and energy SDGs.
>
> I am not surprised Kirk Smith does not acknowledge TLUD stoves. For 
> him, all solid fuels are dirty by definition. He has no data for or 
> against. And he is not paid by EPA to examine TLUD stoves or any other 
> solid fuel stove anywhere in the world; why should you expect more 
> from him?
>
> At the "big picture" policy and publicity level, biomass stove 
> innovations are on nobody's radar screen. What did you see at the 
> Delhi Clean Cooking Forum? Did Rachel Kyte embrace your wood gas idea 
> or acknowledge that biomass stoves  had a critical role to play in 
> cleaner cooking? (Kyte's experience in energy technical issues or 
> management is rather small.)
>
> ------------
> Now about TLUD stoves and you.
>
> It is not that I have not read about TLUD stoves, just that it does 
> not seem to get the fuel to raise the steam at high enough pressure. 
> (For me, fuel is money is fuel.)
>
> From a policy perspective, I am biased toward consumer choice - which 
> means different size/types incorporating the same basic idea. So that 
> a "critical mass" of customers can be aggregated and monitored. That 
> takes a lot of effort, and a lot of national government buy-in if 
> external donors are involved. The CSI project - which had the guts to 
> claim "Contextual Design and Promotion of Clean Stoves" - is a 
> promising example. There are a few other examples; I am waiting for 
> Tom Miles to give me a list of projects and associated documents so I 
> can do a more recent evaluation. (Mary Louise Gifford did something 
> about ten years ago, and so did GVEP, and some cooperation agencies 
> for South Asia and South Africa. GIZ must have a whole cabinet full of 
> reports and, more importantly, institutional memory for the "soft" 
> parameters - relationships, procurement, management.)
>
> If you don't have that "critical mass" to go big, you are left to the 
> mercy of CDM, Gold Standard, and Goldman Sachs aDALYs. I started on 
> that route decades ago, and still support C-Dev projects for that 
> market. But it needs a scale up and fast. (From what I can tell, the 
> pipeline of stoves projects in CDM inventory is thin, and very little 
> progress has been recorded so far. It is a tedious and top-heavy, 
> costly process.)
>
> By "Thrown in the towel," I meant in reference to Kirk Smith's 
> challenge to biomass stove community. It is not a matter of 4 million 
> stoves, of any type. It is about gearing up at the pace of LPG network 
> in India - mind you, it took 20 years to reach many cities, and 20 
> more years to most cities and towns, only now reaching villages.
>
> To get to 100 million by 2025. (I would add in non-household customers 
> too; the food services industry is expanding phenomenally, and 
> changing the face of foods. The poor are lucky if they have enough 
> food; they are more likely to die of premature death from 
> mal/under-nutrition than inhaling WHO fantasies of PM2.5).
>
> That kind of enterprise requires management skills and finance that 
> are typically obtained only in large energy companies, however 
> inefficient or capacity-weak they may be.
>
> Without that kind of "bankability", aid monies cannot move. GACC is a 
> prime example itself. If you watched the Accenture/GACC webinar - and 
> read my note to Ron - even Deutsche Bank couldn't find enough bankable 
> enterprises to spend the money for the Clean Cooking Working Capital 
> Fund.
>
> I don't remember what the money was. Around $7-10 million. If that 
> much money could not be moved without significant hit to the "patient 
> investor" - in that case the Netherland Enterprise Agency - how can 
> $100 million and a $1 billion be moved, when and where?
>
> I am not under the delusion that GACC and IFC (International Finance 
> Corporation, a World Bank arm for private corporate finance) had, that 
> somehow "the market" would do it all once ISO TC-285 issued its 
> report. I have had my battles for supporting biomass cooking in Africa 
> and know that a lot of finance opportunities exist in theory but 
> getting it in practice is very tough.
>
> Who can provide that "soft money", and the competence to funnel it? 
> (IFC and ex-IFC folks were in the GACC webinar on the failed fund; I 
> haven't yet tried to contact them, but seems to me they are still 
> believers in market-based solutions).
>
> ------------
> Making char and using pyrolysis gas for cooking -- yes, I do like the 
> idea. There need to be more designs, more actors, more money. And we 
> need to get away from blind belief in the TC-285 chicanery. I think it 
> is time for somebody to take GACC out of UNF's hands, and reform or 
> retire TC-285.
>
> Nikhil
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