Eight things I learned (and two I didn’t) at the PCIA forum in Lima
The Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) is an umbrella group that brings together over 460 organizations and individuals that are actively involved in finding technological and policy solutions for the 3 billion people on Earth who depend on wood, charcoal, and other solid biomass fuels for cooking and heating.
The PCIA was established in the last decade with support from the US EPA in an effort address the public health impact of indoor air pollution from inefficient solid biomass fuel combustion in homes around he world. Of the 2 million estimated deaths worldwide from exposure to indoor air pollution, the overwhelming majority are women and children. Dependence on unsustainably produced solid biomass fuels can also lead to the perpetuation of the poverty cycle, climate change, and serious environmental degradation.
At the invitation of the government of Peru, the PCIA hosted its fifth biennial international forum outside the capital during the last week of February.
At the conference, The Charcoal Project was especially thrilled to be able to speak with program managers, carbon finance experts, manufacturers, and policy-makers.
We learned many things after speaking and listening to so many people. What follows is a tiny sampling.
1. When is a cookstove is not just a cookstove. From Christa Roth, we learned that what we consider a basic modern kitchen is actually a collection of six or seven cooking technologies. That’s because a modern has a natural gas or electric range that is comprised of four burners on average, each one of which constitutes the equivalent of one cooking unit. What’s more, add an oven, a toaster, and a microwave, and now you have an additional three different types cooking technologies. This visualization really helps put things perspective, doesn’t it?
2. Gassifiers are amazingly efficient and burn super hot! One fascinating segment of the forum focused on the demonstration of various different types of cookstoves. Gassifier-type stoves (such as TLUDs) and the famous rocketstoves battled each other on the lawn outside the meeting hall. What astonished me the most was the incredibly high fuel efficiency and temperature reached by the TLUD (over 600 C in Otto Formo/MIOMBO’s stove) in comparison to the rocketstove. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out in this video.
3. Mobile phones & clean cookstoves. Maybe it’s the nerd in me but I really liked Michael Benedict’s demonstration of how his software for mobile phones is helping keep better track of cookstove sales and use. The application, which makes the use of paper and pencil unnecessary, will be especially useful for projects that integrate carbon finance into their business models. So forget about deciphering the hand-rwriting of colleagues.
4. Eric Reynolds, an American transplant to Rwanda, is determined to disseminate gasifier cookstoves on a large-scale. In my mind, he presented the most ambitious and visionary project. I call it visionary because his business model integrates the entire biomass energy supply chain and is designed to scale up in a way that will eventually deliver productive energy into the national grid. The fuel would come from sustainable biomass and the use of biochar. If he succeeds, his project could become THE model for replication elsewhere.
5. Evan Haigler of Impact Carbon calculates that the deployment of 100 million clean cookstoves by 2020 could generate $2.5 billion in carbon finance funding. The 100 million by 2020 is the goal set by Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. The big question still remains, how to get current programs to step it up. Is it about picking winner and losers? No, says, Haigler, it’s about creating a structure where more cookstove programs can access the potential of carbon finance.
6. The most efficient, clean burning stove is not always the best stove. The best stove is the one people will adopt and use. And looks count, too. We learned this from VJ of International Lifeline Fund, and from Mouhsine Serrar of Prakti Design Lab in India. Not only does the Prakti stove measure up in emissions and fuel efficiency, it’s design makes it an easy contestant for a Milan Industrial Design Award. Also from ILF’s VJ: “Don’t get married to a certain technology. It’s about what works for the end user.”
7. The program that inspired us the most came from Geres Cambodia as presented by its improved cookstove director, S. Yohanes Iwan Baskoro, or Iwan for short. What we loved about Geres Cambodia was the integration of the efficiency and sustainability along the entire biomass energy supply chain. The expansion of Geres’ program from clean cookstoves to improved charcoal kilns and energy forest should be a case study for those focused on balancing the needs of the energy poor and a healthy environment. Go forward and multiply, Geres!
8. We were pleased to see that, no matter what other people say, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstove has not gone on a spending spree or a frenzied rush to meet artificial targets. Although 9 years is a short time, the process of deploying 100 million cookstoves has to be very well thought out. Kudos to the Alliance for its open and transparent approach during this process. We’re looking forward to seeing a game plan later this year.
Two things we would have liked to know more about are:
9. Where is the sustainable fuel component in all of this? The fuel component was conspicuously and disappointingly absent from the discussion. Given the current and unsustainable rates of fuel consumption in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s possible that the long term goals of reducing mortality associated with indoor air pollution could be hampered by the broader impact of severely degraded environments and the vulnerability of the poor to increasing floods and droughts. We were told there was a Fuel & Technology working group working but we didn’t see or hear much from them in this session.
In our opinion, clean cookstoves and sustainable fuels must go hand in hand. To borrow that Clintonian turn of phrase, “it’s about the entire solid biomass energy supply chain, stupid!”
10. Last but not least, what is in a Pisco sour?
Thank you PCIA for inviting us to participate in this great event! See you in two years!
— The Charcoal Project
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Hi Kim;
It was good to meet you at the conference. Texie Marks, David Blume and I talked to you about creating a sustainable (we prefer to use the term regenerative) fuel system using ethanol. Sadly we must not have made much of an impression because you left us out of item 9. It is precisely because a permaculture based ethanol fuel system addresses your point that: “it’s possible that the long term goals of reducing mortality associated with indoor air pollution could be hampered by the broader impact of severely degraded environments and the vulnerability of the poor to increasing floods and droughts. ” in that it provides a breakthrough in improving the lives of people. When biomass burning is the only thing on the table solutions are bounded by the fact that you can only be searching for fractionally less emissions, why not go for infinitely less emissions as in none? This is the paradigm of scarcity that we look only for incremental improvements and not breakthroughs that allow everyone in the world to live as we do. It is the paradigm of scarcity that enables the control of the world’s many by the few. If people have access to systems of production based on what they have at hand instead of hand-outs they have independence and freedom to improve their living standards not on a fractional basis but on a multiplicative basis. Your mission statement uses the term “alleviate” we are thinking in terms of “eliminate”. Our world is a virtual perpetual motion machine, we get free energy every day from the sun. There is no need for anyone to regulate our access to this energy and it should become ubiquitous. If we can start thinking this way we break through scarcity and the fractional improvement limits imposed on human progress.
This is not criticism of your work. I will never criticize those who work to promote progress in living conditions for people. I only seek to promote progress and breakthrough thinking and denigrating other’s work will not achieve that. Keep up your good work!
Thank you, Richard, for your comments. For the record, we LOVE the potential of bioethanol and its role in alleviating energy poverty. If we didn’t include it in our top 10 list it’s because we have already expressed our unalloyed support for the fuel and its potential in a blog post we did on Project Gaia late last year. We hope to include bioethanol in the mix of fuels and technologies we will be testing in our BEEP (Biomass Energy Efficiency Project) in Rubaare, Uganda soon! We’ll keep you posted!
Thanks for enabling me to learning what others are doing.
Gasfication is a technology which is not so common in the promoters of stoves here in Uganda, some times they are demostrated only in enegry shows but no body is out there producing them.
I think we still have a lot to do in stove technology.
How best can learn how to designing them, kindly avail me with the info.
Dear Richard,
Thanks for your comment. I think one place you can start is by visiting the Biomass Energy Foundation: http://www.woodgas.com/
Rgds,
Kim