[Stoves] Inclusion of Scale-up studies --- was RE: An analysis of efforts to scale up clean household energy for cooking around the world

[Crispin Pemberton-Pigott]

Let me contribute one missing project (they are all cooking stoves that also heat the home)

Case study country          Mongolia
& cooking fuel                   Lignite

Case study title                 Ulaanbaatar Clean Air Programme, UB-CAP

Target population            600,000 urban detached homes

Reach of program            To date, >180.000

Time frame                         2012-Present

Implementing organization(s)     UB-CAP’s Programme Management Unit (PMU)

Stated program objectives           Replace all traditional coal stove in the city with high performance, project-approved products

Main funding sources     Millennium Challenge Corporation, World Bank, Ulaanbaatar City Government, Mongolian National Government + others

Programme finance to date:        $100m

Regards
Crispin

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Subject: Re: Inclusion of Scale-up studies --- was RE: [Stoves] An analysis of efforts to scale up clean household energy for cooking around the world

Paul:

Good idea. But let's spare this paper and its Table 1 the bother of attention. It does not do what it purports to do, and its "conceptual model" is platitudinous vaporware for academic citations game and public relations exercise for the ISN to justify more grants for similarly useless research. I have no hesitation in calling it "junk science".

Let's try to get an agreement on the following (to be expanded) to be covered, even qualitatively (meaning, without surveys validated by statisticians):

0. Geography and weather patterns of the region(s), characteristics of buildings (homes), and typical locations of stove(s).

1. What are the purposes of a "baseline" stove, and how can its functions and operations be characterized? Repeat for multiple stoves as needed until at least 75% of the foods cooked and eaten are covered (including those away from home but in the locality).

2. What is the "baseline" combustible in terms of physical properties and botanical name or mining origin? Repeat for multiple fuels and get an idea of price if traded.

3. What are the purposes of a "new" stove and how do they match against the actual use of the stoves partly or fully displaced?

4. What are the "typical" meals, their frequency, timing, and variations by income class, season, type (roasted, fried, dried, pickled, brewed, smoked, stewed, boiled)?

5. Who - which "family" member or hired help if any - cooks and serves these meals and what else does s/he or can s/he do with his or her daily time including chores related to cooking - purchase of food, fetching fuel and water, grinding or chopping, making the dough - and otherwise, in particular with cleaning (clothes, dishes, floors), child care and school homework (own or others')?

6. What changes have "typically" taken place in the region in all these previous six categories, including population growth, occupation and incomes, migration and remittances, new household formation, new residential construction, and availability, relative costs (per GJ raw, delivered) and quality of fuels?

7. What is "scale up" and what is the theory of change, whose monies and reputations are at stake if at all, in light of all these changes (in 6) that have taken place and will likely take place in the next ten years?

Please tell me if this list is superfluous and that all that is needed is an equation for efficiency in boiling water in the lab.

I happen to believe that all of us "experts" have been criminally negligent in understanding the purpose of cooking and in the practice of treating three billion people as subjects, their homes as boxes, their foods as boiled water, and their health as determined exclusively by air exchange in the lungs.

I still can't tell what NIH theories of fuel substitution have to do with the price of proverbial eggs, not just "health" (as I discussed earlier below).

Yes, I demand science from scientists. If they don't know how to cook but numbers, they should go to Geneva.

Next steps I suggest: (this takes more than a volunteer, but it needs a guide)

a. Collection of reports of listing of "projects" and descriptions of case studies. I can start with my recollections - from Manibog (1983) to Gifford, GVEP, SADC, ESMAP. Even this Quinn paper. Some from Boiling Point, HEDON, gtz/giz, GACC database, Practical Action, all of you who have had what I call "hearth attack". (I mean in the noble, inspiring sense; even I have been accused of it.) Elimination of junk like that Hanna, Duflo, Greenstone (2012) paper or output from entertainers like this ISN.

b. Extraction of cost and time data.

c. This is the most difficult, and this is why I am enormously grateful to Sujatha for making the initial contribution this time around: narratives of the information, knowledge, skill base for project design and administration. There have been such efforts in the past, by Doug Barnes and others at ESMAP, and that piece in an anthropology journal I discovered last year. There is more in printed literature, but this is more an issue of personal interviews and gathering reminiscences. If this list has an objective other than debating performance metrics and lab tests, I hope some 500 of its readers can contribute in this effort to extract their "stories". Then we might get a better idea of what should fuel post-GACC future for better biomass stoves.

What do you say?

Nikhil

PS: I disagree with you that "LPG and electricity are still far short of reaching half." In the absence of actual data, let me just accept the folklore that 3 billion people have been using solid fuels for cooking at home since at least 1975, probably as far back as 1960. In the last 30 years, number of households in this "solid fuels for cooking" market has doubled, and in the last 40 years, maybe increased 50%. Still, there is no evidence yet that wood and charcoal have disappeared from proximity for collection or from markets for heating and cooking. We do not even have more than anecdotal evidence that urban charcoal prices have grown in inflation-adjusted terms by more than 50% if that.

My view is, if you were to consider the entire useful thermal energy demands for cooking and heating of the gross increment of 1 billion new households in the last 40 years, gases and electricity have indeed met a half of the incremental demand, and solid fuels have died out or remained stagnant. Gas and electricity are more efficient, and ideal for urban areas and meals, prepared foods outside homes.

How do I get this? Since the 1980s on, the gross number of births worldwide has been 1.3 billion per decade, remarkably constant through 1990s, 2000s, and this decade. That means 5 billion humans. Some 1 billion have died, so net growth of 4 billion.  There are more under-20 than over-70, so I am guessing about 1.5 billion new households (couples) have formed, roughly doubled since 1980, of which 1 billion in the developing world's solid fuel users. (That is, 2/3 of the world total; that is roughly the distribution of population growth in household numbers; I neglect joint families).

If the number of households has doubled but solid fuel use hasn't, gas and electricity already have a 50% share.

Go ahead; prove me wrong. Demography is destiny.

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