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

Mon Jul 23 07:55:35 CDT 2018

My 2 cents of contribution.....

First cent: I agreed with Crispin that "Rocket Stove dimensionalism where
ratios are held sacred, more than function" is part of the problem. Usually
we see rocket powered stoves with fuel feeding entrance too small to
produce  enough energy to satisfy users. Saving fuels is preferred to
practical use.  Too mall fuel feed entrance frustrate users by not
delivering enough energy, and by requiring more work in order to split wood
into very thin pieces.

Second cent: A really good biomass stoves is expensive for very poor
households. To make a robust, clean (not leaking smoke indoors), efficient,
and practical (cook, bake, warm space and heat water)  internal combustion
biomass stove,  is much more expensive than mass produced external
combustion LPG stove. Good biomass stoves in LDC is usually hand produced,
and does not achieve low cost, as if mass scale produced.

Rogério

Em sex, 13 de jul de 2018 às 08:43, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> escreveu:

> 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    - Unapologetic insistence on the use of the WBT, an unpublished,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
> <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
>
> 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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