[Biochar] Biochar and stove advocates an learn about SUCCESSFUL stove projects Re: Biochar ranking at Project Drawdown

by (updated on )
Michael, Ron and the Biochar crowd,       AND to the the Stovers because this is about stoves that make char..   And to the GACC and ESMAP and Shell Foundation and all those who are sitting on money or acting as “filters” or gate-keepers of funds for stoves.

Please listen.   Please read and understand and please tell others.   NOTE:   I like and advocate for the FC troughs etc and biochar.   BUT PLEASE pay attention to what I have said before and what obviously you are not comprehending..

1.  THIS is Only about TLUD char-making stoves.   Forget about the ICS “Inadequate cookstoves.   NOT rockets or char-burning stoves. 

There really are some good TLUDs.   And I am telling everyone over and over again about the great success in West Bengal India.   WITH SUCCESSFUL MARKETING.     The Case Study of Deganga (at my website).    It was essentially the pilot study.   12,000 stoves (including 1000 in Assam state).   And now in a second loaction in Rongo community we are getting 65% adoption by the households.    TLUD Stove acceptance:   ACCOMPLISHED in pilot.   and being expanded X10  (10-fold increase in the project, to add 125,000 more char-making Champion ND-TLUDs in 3 years).    Industrially made:   quality.   7-year (0r more) lifespan if with maintenance, which is part of the package.  

???  Okay???   Got that????   No more talk about  non-acceptance.   Scale-up to hundreds of thousands could be soon.   then to the millions. 

—– Let’s turn to the money issues.  

2.  Finances:  These stoves SAVE money, and they MAKE money for the households (char being sold for burning elswhere because there is no support for biochar usage into soils there YET!!!! )    10 tons of char of TLUD / biochar quality per day!!   Income EARNING for the households!!!!!!

Also   —-   The TLUD stoves there are earning CER/GS certified carbon credits EACH YEAR (now in the 5th year).   Dollar value each year equals the cost of the manufacturing the stove (but project maintenance needs 50% to assure continuation throught the next year, and onward for 7 years.    So call that a 50% return on investment (ROI) — assumption is that somebody will purchase carbon credits.     

—-   But in order that the POOR people can have the stove and put it to profitable use, it is sold at a subsidized price of $15 (versus $35 from the factory).   That $15 is used for sales commissions and maintenance and support and training, in that first year.   This is working very well.   Local job creation, etc.  

So, my big problem is to ge the $35 per stove  (We base our projections on $40 per stove to have a little margin).   Forty dollars is not much for what is being accomplished:   Cleanest (healthiest)  type of stove that actually uses solid biomass as the fuel —- to make the gases that are used for cooking.  TLUD stoves (of several designs) are THE BIOMASS ALTERNATIVE TO LPG   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!     NOTHING ELSE IN THE SOLID BIOMASS STOVE-WORLD COMES CLOSE to LPG.        AND reduction of fuel usage (about 50%, even allowing for the charcoal that is produced.)     And the carbon credits.    And all the stove blah blah blah about fast lighting and some turn-down, and the better workload etc for women, AND earning money from the char procuction. 

Sure.   Multiple benefits.     But a SELF-SUSTAINING project with the support and mainenance and carbon credit operations (and surplus earned money) needs about 10,000 stoves in a serviceable area (depends on population concentration).     And 10,000 stoves requires $400,000 to get them from the factory.  SOLEY THE COST OF MANUFACTURED STOVES, nothing of that money is needed for the stove business operations (maintenance, training, marketing, sales).    That is a lot of money.   BUT it pays back several times over durtig the 7 + years of the project.!!!!  

By the way, I am doing this via my not for profit (just getting started) Juntos NFP.   The people are the beneficiaries, not me.

So, NOW, these days, I am looking for money to expand from the pilot to scale-up and further pilots in other areas.  Details of such searching is done “off-List”, but if you have any leads (even for smaller amounts) of funds, please contact me at     psanders@ilstu.edu       On-going, expanding projects, and to discuss new areas.

But let’s not have any more statements such as those I have left below (in case anyone wants to read them) about the lack of viability or real progress with cookstoves.     REMEMBER, THESE ARE TLUD CHAR-MAKING STOVES.      (Forget about the ICs “Inadequate” Cooking Solutions.)  

Paul                     (This message will be soon available at my EPosts site on my website.) 

Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD  Email:  psanders@ilstu.edu  Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072  Website:  www.drtlud.com
On 5/12/2017 3:26 AM, comments on listserve for  [biochar] wrote:   (snipped)

I think that issue is going to come down to value and margins. I suspect that stoves are never going to sell for much. They can’t. The poor can’t afford much. And if stoves don’t sell for much, there’s not going to be much of a margin, especially with big distribution costs getting out to where the poor live and use such stoves. This said, whatever the “model” is, popularizing the clean stove (charring or not) is going to require a miracle of manufacturing streamlining and distribution streamlining. Someone is going to have to figure out how to handle the back end of stoves really well. Either someone is going to have to build an amazing more centralized system or figure out an extraordinarily sophisticated decentralized system (the financing of which will be pretty miraculous itself).
Cell phones or toothpaste, my main point remains the same: the problem is no longer perfecting the stove; it is figuring out how to get every poor person in the world to believe that (s)he must have one and how to ensure that (s)he can buy it effortlessly for a price (s)he can afford.
Like it or not, it all comes down to business 101. Who is the customer? A very, very poor woman who does not know that she needs what you want to sell her. What is your first challenge? To make her need your product to the point of pain. From this, you have the prospect of creating a value proposition: my product will take away your pain – which is so great that you will spend some of your (very, very small) income to buy it. And what else do you need to make this go? Well, your product better do everything that its predecessor did – and assuage the pain – and all for a price that fits within the customer’s other important pain point: absolute income limit.