Nikhil and all,
Your meaningful comments below were NOT “off-topic” for this Stoves Listserv. And my reponse here certainly is “on-topic” and responds to your statement:
“Clean energy” has so far bypassed the poor, and the risk is, so will this “clean fuel” mania. Unless biomass stove community gets its act together and offers a competitive choice. Kirk Smith’s challenge is loaded.
Juntos Energy Solutions NFP (Not For Profit) is offering a competitive choice. I have submitted a Juntos NFP proposal to the GACC program for Spark+ (currently being evaluated) and to other places in the search for assistance for implementation. That document is exactly what I sent to GACC Spark+, except for deletion of some confidential information about business negotiations currently in progress.
You can read it at www.juntosnfp.org/resources (The JuntosNFP website is still being constructed and will serve as the site for the operational / scaling-up / financial contributions regarding projects with TLUD stoves.)
The included information is essentially a partial update on the “Case Study.. . Deganga” found at www.drtlud.com/deganga2016 . This is a major success story, and it is time to scale-up.
I have nothing against LPG stoves reaching additional tens of millions of households. But LPG authorities (Kirk Smith and the LPG organization) and the World Bank’s May 2017 publication cited by Nikhil (below) have stated:
In the absence of targeted subsidies, LPG will not be the solution for the world’s poorest people.
The proposal by Juntos NFP DOES include poorest of the poor. And it will give LPG a run for its money in terms of acceptance and financial viability and very clean combustion (which will get even better, as has already been shown, including by the Mimi-Moto TLUD-FA stove).
Looking forward to comments.
Paul (Executive Director of Juntos NFP)
Doc / Dr TLUD / Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD Email: psanders@ilstu.edu Skype: paultlud Phone: +1-309-452-7072 Website: www.drtlud.com
CAK27e==CRBEeQy-wL-x7fC_p9LvSBFLdH-hsA98JZVN7SS-_Sg@mail.gmail.com“>
Increasing the Use of Liquefied Petroleum Gasin Cooking in Developing Countries, May 2107Mostly cite-o-logy and platitudes, some interesting new references I will read and post later.
What caught my eye is
“Additionally, because smoke from neighboring biomass-burning households or kerosene lamps could compromise the benefits of cooking with clean fuels, GLPGP and other environmental health experts recommend that all households within a community transition as fully to LPG as possible at the same time, to ensure that the maximum health benefits are achieved. Some Indian states such as Karnataka are adopting this approach, with designated “smokeless villages.”
This can be both promising – social pressures for behavioral change – as well as dangerous – because when combined with government powers in a fractured society that is India, it risks stigmatizing the poorest, many of whom do not have permanent homes or kitchens, and not even food from one week to another.
Fuel per se is not the cause of “smoke”, and “clean fuels” is not the sole answer. Besides, smoke is not the only risk, nor necessarily the most significant one.
I suppose underlying the idea of “smokeless village” is the argument that, “all households within a community transition as fully to LPG as possible at the same time, to ensure that the maximum health benefits are achieved.”
This claim from environmental health experts has no theoretical or empirical validity. Besides, there is always a declining marginal benefit per $ of expenditure on clean fuels, and this kind of absolutism is dangerous in a democratic society.
+++++++++
There is more smoke in environmental health and economics claims: “Household air pollution in low- and middle-income countries caused an estimated $1.52 trillion in economic losses and $94 billion in lost labor income in 2013 (World Bank 2016).”
*** Yeah, compared to what? The woman in attached picture — just got it a week ago, trying to ascertain the location – is carrying roughly 30 kg of wood balanced on her head, with a nursing baby in front. What employment opportunity would she have compared to about $1-2 (depending on whom she sells to) she gets from this activity?
I have no doubt many cooks want to save time, not health or forests or climate, and earn $3-4 a day outside if someone else would do their cooking and child care. But it is also the case that at the Bottom of the Pyramid, simple nutritional intake is implicated in lifetime productivity. Food insecurity data are rather weak, but child mal/under-nutrition estimates are done annually. In South Asia there are 60+ million children under 5 who are victims of “stunting”, and wasting is declared “a critical public health emergency” (28 million children under 5) by WHO last month. In South Asia, no fewer than 15% of under-5 children are at increased risk of death, says WHO.
Food, not solid fuel combustion, is the crisis that leads to early deaths and lost productivity.
Says who? Well, WHO. In 2004,WHO attributed more deaths and DALYs in low-income countries to “childhood underweight” than it does to indoor air pollution from household fuels, with a large share of child deaths from diarrhea, measles, pneumonia, and neonatal or other infections attributed to undernutrition. But by 2012, IHME had changed its methods and concocted new data on household air pollution – emissions as well as exposures – and thrown in dubious assumptions of equitoxicity and Integrated Exposure Review, to put big numbers to fool those gullible enough.
Anyway, the economic theory of sources of productivity growth and estimation of lost productivity are as goofy and spongy as those of premature mortality and risk factors. This World Bank (2016) report was cooked up in part by IHME, with frank admissions for data quality and assumptions. On that some other time.
“Clean energy” has so far bypassed the poor, and the risk is, so will this “clean fuel” mania. Unless biomass stove community gets its act together and offers a competitive choice. Kirk Smith’s challenge is loaded. ***
Nikhil
_______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address stoves@lists.bioenergylists.org to UNSUBSCRIBE or Change your List Settings use the web page http://lists.bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/stoves_lists.bioenergylists.org for more Biomass Cooking Stoves, News and Information see our web site: http://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
