[Stoves] Charcoal stoves for Pacific Islands

[Nikhil Desai]

Todd:

I wonder what you meant by your claim "Producing charcoal is not viable or
sustainable in the Pacific."

Charcoal can be made anywhere, and there is plenty of biomass transported
from one side of the Efate island - where Port Vila, the capital is located
-  to another. (Efate was the only island with a circular road, and wood
was collected and transported to the city by truck. In a horrendously
tragic accident sometime in mid-2009, the young son of a man I had met just
a month or so earlier fell off from top of the wood truck and was killed.)

I imagine the demand for charcoal came from some restaurants and similar
commercial food preparers and some from homes with women who also worked
outside home and thus didn't have the time to mess with wood.  Electricity
was around 30-50 USc/kWh and LPG probably around $3.50-4 per kg, so limited
to some commercial and high-income residential customers. (I had electric
and gas cooking, and solar water heater.)

Not only did i see charcoal piles myself in the city's central market, here
is a story from a few years after I left.

https://dailypost.vu/news/municipal-wardens-clamp-down-on-use-of-plastic-bags/article_22856d26-cf04-5961-8a6c-a79ebf3f1173.html


 Ceramic or not, charcoal stoves have a market in Vila.

Nikhil

PS: Charcoal says a lot about urbanization and energy sector policies.

I can still recall my first meeting with David Stein who shocked me with
his observation "In one generation, Melanesians and other Pacific Islanders
have gone from traditional root carbs to rice, implicated in a sharp rise
in diabetes."

I had just a year earlier done some field research in India where I had
discovered something similar - rice, in particular the milled white rice,
had nearly wiped out other grains considered "poor people's staple" (e.g.,
millet), and that rice was also easier to grow. But this was different. So
my reaction to David was, "Astounding! Why?"

For the first time ever in my life, someone I had just met told me,
"Nikhil, you are not as smart as you think you are. The reason is simply
what you were boasting about a few minutes ago, telling Liz Bates that one
way to save energy in cooking was eating out. People have switched from
root carbs to rice because it is easier and faster to cook. Same with pasta
and buying ready food at the Chinese shops."

I didn't have to begin a discussion on charcoal or LPG or the silliness of
woodfuel efficiency pursuit when wood is ample. David had confirmed my
hypotheses about charcoal and that more efficient charcoal stoves were an
easier sell than similar wood stoves. Urbanization opens up the
opportunities for women outside home, and the value on girls' education
goes up; both, in turn, raise the value of convenience, flexibility, in
cooking. Charcoal wins hands down once there is a stable, sizable market.
Kerosene and LPG come in too unless electricity is dirt cheap, as someone
recently reminded me about one of the 'stans sometime.


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



On Fri, Nov 1, 2019 at 1:36 PM Todd Albi <todd.r.albi at gmail.com> wrote:

> None:
>
> We have sent humanitarian containers to the Pacific successfully using our
> SilverFire rocket stoves with palm fronds on the beach.  The renewable
> spathe is torn into strips and utilized for cooking.  Producing charcoal is
> not viable or sustainable in the Pacific and having them rely on
> commercially dependent charcoal is inappropriate.
>
> Todd Albi, SilverFire
>
>
>
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