[Stoves] New (old) stove policy paper

[Ronal Larson]

List with ccs

	See inserts.

> On Jan 2, 2020, at 5:44 AM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ron:
> 
> In principle I support the business of charmaking. When and how it can be a bankable business is my concern; will try when I get a few million dollars to design and implement a project that is agreeable to a developing country's finance minister, not to Bill Gates. 
	[RWL:  I am into this topic mainly following dozens of discussions with Kevin McLean.  He has reached millions of 3-stone stove users in a few months with an inspired use of religious groups who see value on helping parishioners save money (like half).  All the money flow has been out of his pocket.  This effort need not involve millions to get started.  But yes more money will be needed  - as an investment - not an expense.


> You ask " Comments on how this might be modified if using a stove that made money for the user (and I still can’t think of anything besides charcoal in that category).  Should governments take special (health, soil, climate, jobs, balance-of-trade, etc) efforts - different from past stove policy analyses (because of charcoal)? "
> 
> One, stoves can make COOKED FOOD FOR SALE. (I will respond to Teddy separately.) After all, we are talking of COOK-stoves, not char ovens.
	RWL:  See message just sent to list following Crispin message saying same thing.  I fail to understand why the two distinctly different uses of cookstoves are coupled.  They go together. They are not in conflict.

> Second, this paper, as I explain below, is academic junk; nobody is ever going to be able to design a perfect project that academics endorse.
	[RWL:  As I said,  I found this paper very useful.  31 different aspects in establishing stove improvement efforts.  Their conclusion - ALL 31 are important.  I have not seen this list before.  All apply to promoting money-making charcoal-making stoves.  
	I am not expecting perfection.  I am hoping to help both current stove users and the climate.

> Third, governments SHOULD - but probably WOULD NOT - take special efforts unless there is an overwhelming case of prioritizing; as you should now know from the experience of the last 30 years, governments have more important things to do - including corruption - than entertain rich people's fads.
	[RWL. I think you have perfectly well summed up your view of the “fad” that I am about.  Thanks for making it so clear to me and the many on this list you deem rich.

>  I am by now pretty convinced that non-contextual promotion of cleaner biomass cookstoves is a reflection of the lifestyles of the rich and loud making money off the poor and meek. (Distinct from the contextual design and promotion <https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/25129?locale-attribute=en>, another ESMAP product you should read, bookended with the 1994 paper  by Barnes, et al.) 
> 
> I am sorry if my use of the word "fad" offended you. To me, most of the "published literature" part about poor people's biomass cookstoves is a fad, a hobby, a horrendous insult to the real work that goes on in making money count at the end of the pipeline. There are markets for fuels, foods, stoves, labor, and people grow old, die off, making trade-offs. Mere professors and advocate activists like GACC, quasi-academics at WHO derive their income from fads. 
	[RWL:  I can’t speak for others, but I have been in the stove business  for more than 25 years (never making a dime) after working in Sudan, whose country side has been ruined by the making and consumption of charcoal - a horrible fuel.
> 
> But I will use another phrase for your interest now - youthful exuberance. I am old and cynical. You are young and hopeful. 
	[RWL:  I’m 86.
> 
> I hope you agree with the stipulation that "making money" is better defined as "earning profits", revenue minus costs, howsoever defined. 
	[RWL:  A distinction without a difference.
> 
> I also hope you then agree that there are many profitable opportunities, each with different risk profiles and gestation time. 
	[RWL:  I am unaware of anyone  proposing greatly expanded charcoal-making stove use as a way to BOTH make money and help with climate restoration.  The first depends on the latter.  Those who are unconcerned about the latter will certainly downplay the former.  HAP is a minor (but supportive) part of this.
	The question I am asking relates to your phrase “risk profiles and gestation time”.  Is it hopeless to think we can promote char-making stoves that make money?
	No need to comment on the next - with which I disagree.
> 
> Then I can give you an opinion on this paper - , Rehfuess, et al. Enablers and Barriers to Large-Scale Uptake of Improved Solid Fuel Stoves:A Systematic Review.
> 
> 1. It is a secondary or tertiary work. None of these people have any direct experience in design and implementation of investment projects. As they say " We conducted systematic searches through multidisciplinary databases, specialist websites, and consulting experts ." This is strikingly different from the paper you are still reading, by Barnes, et al. Yes, only one (Robert) of the four authors had actual experience in biomass supplies and household cookstoves but two others had field experience in the sociology of energy (Doug) and one in forestry and wood use (Keith). The last one (Kirk), while an academic, had extensive field experience conducting and observing research. This, sir, is academic exuberance. 
	
> 
> 2. Their first conclusion in the Abstract is sophomoric blather: " Achieving adoption and sustained use of IS at a large scale requires that all factors, spanning household/community and program/societal levels, be assessed and supported by policy. " Yeah, right. The logical implication is, "Nobody can do anything other than churn out academic platitudes." Been there, done that; decades ago. 
> 
> 3. Their second conclusion in the Abstract  "We propose a planning tool that would aid this process and suggest further research to incorporate an evaluation of effectiveness." This is more like an advanced undergraduate's serious plea for a career. This is what your favorite "published authors" have done for a lifetime now. Has made no difference other than production of PhDs by means of PhDs. 
> 
> THIS, sir, is an ACTUAL EXAMPLE, of "making money with stoves", exploiting "profitable opportunities" to get rich in the name of the poor. This is what EPA contractors have done. (World Bank authors like Doug, Keith and Robert had also made a well-paying careers out of writing review papers but they were held to a far higher standard of practitioners in energy projects and policymaking. Most academics are poor excuses for effective intelligence.) 
> 
> You are fond of throwing citations rather than researching and debating the propositions.
	[RWL:  I guess I haven’t made it sufficiently clear that I have been ONLY asking whether this money-making concept can be exploited (via a climate-related, many available route).  Sorry you took 2 citations that I found helpful to be “throwing”.  You seem to have missed that my intent “researching and debating."
  	Your answer to my fundamental climate/char/stove question seems to be no. 
	I again ask for the opinion of others.

	I choose not to respond to anything further (or the immediate preceding) - as I am not interested in picking arguments.  This dialog is NOT intended to be about health issues ( which might be termed your “fad”?).  Lest anyone misunderstand - I think you have missed the considerable value in having 31 clearly distinct and different stove choices criteria in one place - only a few related to health.  
	I read a lot of stove papers - and I have never seen 31 issues/concerns in one place.  I like what they did (and there is an important background paper I am beginning to read.  Maybe more on that.)

Ron

> I pick and choose arguments not because they make me buy comfortable company among groupthinkers. I do have academic friends whom I respect and even agree with at times, so let me now pretend to be an academic peer reviewer for this paper that has already passed the thresholds of mutual backscratchers: 
> 
> a. This is a lie adopted by cite-o-logy and groupthink: "In terms of PM10 exposure, HAP can thus be placed somewhere between passive and active smoking and, unsurprisingly, most of the well-known health effects associated with tobacco smoking have also been documented for HAP. " There is no - repeat, no - measure of long-term PM10 exposure from cooking, and HAP exposures cannot be separated from other PM10 in the first place. (The Saksena paper referred to has a broken link in the paper. But see "Exposure Data: Household Use of Solid Fuels and High-temperature Frying." <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK385522/%C2%A0> and find me evidence of PM10 exposures due to household solid fuels, other sources, for sizable population and long enough durations to make any policy-relevant finding.)  
> 
> b. Read this carefully - " Economic modeling suggests that IS use can be a cost-effective means of reducing the HAP-attributable disease burden" (IS = Improved Stoves). Modeling can suggest anything that suits the fancy of the modeler. What is referred to here as "benefit" is reduction in "HAP-attributable disease burden". Remember, attributions are for populations at large, and Burden of Disease applies to some 50-55 million people dying every year and their lifelong exposures to various "risk factors" for disease and disability. For most of the presumed household users of solid fuels for cooking and heating, there is simply no recorded evidence of exposures to HAP for these millions. Since "HAP exposures" is a lie, the whole edifice of this "economic modeling" is also a lie. 
> 
> c. Finally, " The validity of the insights gained is fundamentally determined by the quality of the included studies."  Which is academic cop-out, a pretense at honesty in order to save one's hide. Also, " Given the included study designs and their apparent limitations, the majority of individual study findings should be seen as associations rather than as causal effects. " Again, honesty that admits impotence. 
> 
> Now, I do not grudge academics their chosen path to fame and money. Just that what these authors present after reviewing 57 studies and interviewing experts is well-known among practitioners for decades. All they say is "Do more research." I happen to be skeptical of the intent and competence of arms-length research. I used to like "intervention-based research" and could still find youthful enthusiasm for it, but no longer for epidemiology of the Malawi stove studies we have discussed here a couple of years back. These epidemiological types usually know nothing about the science of combustion or of environmental risk factors generally (all of which are contextual) or the lifestyles of the poor and meek, only the lifestyles of the rich and loud. 
> 
> N
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Nikhil Desai
> (US +1) 202 568 5831
> Skype: nikhildesai888
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 2, 2020 at 12:48 AM Ronal Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net <mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>> wrote:
> List with ccs.
> 
> 	I may respond later to some of the following from Nikhil, but I still have to read the paper.
> 
> 	I have however just read a similar new-old (2014) paper that I hope others will disect/critique (I found it well done).  Disect especially in terms that Nikhil calls my “fad" - making money while cooking.  This second paper also doesn’t cover money making - but I like the seven main categories (31 subcategories) they have developed.  Comments on how this might be modified if using a stove that made money for the user (and I still can’t think of anything besides charcoal in that category).  Should governments take special (health, soil, climate, jobs, balance-of-trade, etc) efforts - different from past stove policy analyses (because of charcoal)?
> 	The paper is non-fee and it (and more) is at:  https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/pdf/10.1289/ehp.1306639 <https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/pdf/10.1289/ehp.1306639>. 
> 
> Ron
> 
> 
>> On Jan 1, 2020, at 8:39 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com <mailto:pienergy2008 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Ron: 
>> 
>> I am shocked! Shocked!! Tickled! YOU didn't know THIS paper? 
>> 
>> I can now call myself an old man of "stoves" work as far as Washington policy realm is concerned. You and Crispin are newbies!  
>> 
>> It is NOT, in the World Bank terminology, a "policy paper". You read it wrong. It is a "technical paper". It does not talk about making money, your new fad. And yes, quite a bit has changed in the world, just that this paper was a product of a larger exercise whose details  results were never published. It has a lot of generalities without context, if I remember correctly. It's been 25 years. (No, climate change and CDR haven't changed a thing. They are rich folks' diversions, so as to keep failing, keep poor people poor while pocketing fees and appearing virtuous. 
>> 
>> Nor are all the authors "knowledgeable stove experts". Obviously your definition of "stove experts" is elastic and changes with your presumptions. These authors merely produced a cover for the large East-West Center exercise, probably because Kirk Smith was there at the time. 
>> 
>> It was, however, the first review paper issued as a proper World Bank report. Earlier, in 1983, Fernando Manibog at the Bank had published a review of stove programs in the Annual Review of Energy. And Gerry leach had been commissioned to prepare a Household Energy Databook in 1985/6. I suggest you look up both. They give an insight as to the "pioneering" work that has since dominated the vocabulary; good references. 
>> 
>> About this paper "What Makes People Cook with Improved Biomass Stoves?A Comparative International Review of Stove Programs - Douglas F. Barnes, Keith Openshaw,Kirk R. Smith, and Robert van der Plas " <http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/738011468766789505/pdf/multi-page.pdf>: I can boast that I knew three of the authors since 1982 and the fourth since 1986. Two of them are in Washington still, the other two you know of. 
>> 
>> I hadn't known of its planning and drafts. I was in Addis in Nov 1992 and then for four months in 1993, when I saw the success of the Jiko adapted to Ethiopian cooking and the Mirte mtad being designed and tested with different materials. I was struck by the rapid transformation household energy markets in Addis - biomass stoves as well as electricity for injeras, straight from wood, also sparking off commercialization of injeras. 
>> 
>> This paper had nothing on it because the research design was set in early 1992. From what I recall, Bank clients had begun accepting finance for biomass stove programs beginning around 1986; the first proposals might have been as far back as 1978/9. There was a need for a review and this paper collated findings of tens of projects of various sizes and vintages to cook a hotchpotch, which I didn't particularly like. It did not reflect the complex realities of stove projects that are remotely directed and affected more by Washington bureaucrats' and academics' view of the world more than the difficulties of moving money via governments. 
>> 
>> My copy of this paper had my scribble on the cover page - "Other People's Money!". That's what makes people cook with improved biomass stoves, I showed to some authors a few years later when I had an office at the World Bank. 
>> 
>> My conclusion still remains the same - What makes people cook with improved biomass stoves? Other people's money." 
>> 
>> The real challenge is, how to make sure that money is used effectively - cooks USING the new devices - and not wasted on people who write papers without doing the hard work of project implementation. (Only one of these authors had that experience.)
>> 
>> Of course, the paper's conclusion in the Abstract still remain valid - " Modem, efficient biomass stoves can alleviate some of these problems by reducing some householders' cash outlays for fuel, diminishing the time others must spend to collect fuel, reducing air pollution, and relieving local pressure on wood resources. Yet despite the apparent benefits of improved stoves and a recent spate of "dissemination" programs, many developing-country households have failed to adopt them. "
>> 
>> Doug will be surprised that I agree with him. But of course, he and I both are fans of the word "Modern." 
>> 
>> Doug and Keith wrote a book 18 years later - "Cleaner Hearths, Better Homes" (Oxford 2012, with Priti Kumar). I criticized it, but find it valuable enough to keep it within reach from my desk. This book also has my snarky scribble on the inside cover page - "Not clean enough? Not good enough?" 
>> 
>> But THAT is the crux of my unhappiness with the nonsense of ISO metrics, tiers and protocols. If you get away from the silly notion that stove designers compete for these ISO ratings, you just might focus your work on what the cook finds clean enough and goood enough. The authors' use of the words "cleaner" and "better", combined, says everything that a policy and project planner needs to know. 
>> 
>> Have fun! Please tell us what you discovered in this "old" paper. 
>> 
>> N
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Nikhil Desai
>> (US +1) 202 568 5831
>> Skype: nikhildesai888
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 1, 2020 at 4:16 PM Ronal Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net <mailto:rongretlarson at comcast.net>> wrote:
>> List:
>> 
>> 	I don’t recall this one:  http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/738011468766789505/pdf/multi-page.pdf <http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/738011468766789505/pdf/multi-page.pdf>  (from 1994 - before TLUDs or other char-making stoves were ever mentioned)
>> 
>> 	One question is - if a stove can make money vs save money - are there new or augmented policy options?
>> 
>> 	Another - has anything really changed in 25 years?  (Certainly climate change and CDR are new.)
>> 
>> 	I haven’t finished reading yet.  But it looks well done - by knowledgeable stove experts.
>> 
>> Ron
>> 
>> 	
>> _________________ 
> 

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