When good stove projects go bad!

… or think before you stove.

Sometime in the last decade my former employer launched a stove project in China’s northwest Yunnan Province.

With its clinical, scientific approach to environmental conservation, it determined that the growing pressure on the dwindling vegetation constituted a major stress to the region’s unique environment. The signs were clear: woodfuel collection alone contributed to the loss of 300,000 acres of forest each year.

And, so, a stove project was born. Funds were raised, stove designs were selected, a distribution network was established. Stove were handed out. Targets were met.

Things began to unravel when the project managers discovered that the households were not adopting the stoves as planned. They were instead being cast out of the house. Cue the anthropologist, who discovered that project managers had overlooked a critical cultural factor: the sacred significance of a permanent, visible open flame in the home. A simple fix solved the problem.

This story ended well and to date almost 20,000 stoves and other energy efficient appliances have been distributed in the region.

Stepping in the carcasses of stove projects

But what about all the other abandoned stove projects that litter the world? How much money have donors invested in ill-conceived stove designs, poorly executed marketing campaigns, and lack of investment in capacity building?

I raise this question because my recent conversation with Andree Sosler of the Darfur Stove Project forced me to rethink one of my cherished assumptions: that local stove production was the only way to go. My assumption was that locally produced stoves generated buy-in, jobs, and new markets for a locally produced good. (Read the end of story to find out why I was wrong.)

Learning is never ending

Pondering my own misconception, I realized that there is probably a lot of aggregate and valuable knowledge out there from all the failed stove projects around the world. But how do these lessons get shared and re-applied? How do the wise men and women in the bioenergy community learn from other people’s mistakes? We need to think about this if we’re serious about tackling large-scale energy poverty relief through the adoption of energy efficient stoves, kilns, and briquettes.

I found some answers in a thoughtful paper on why the Improved Charcoal Stove (ICS) project in Tanzania failed to catch on in the late 90s. The paper reveals a number of major flaws in the project. Here are some of the highlights.

Capacity Training

“Of more than the 1000 artisans trained to build the Kenyan-adapted jiko stove, some among the group were taught only how to build a part of the stove, not the entire contraption. “In addition, others learned via apprenticeships or by simply copying designs, which leads to products of variable quality. The problem of having poor quality stoves on the market is a persistent one, and has ‘tarnished the image’ of the ICS.”

Materials and standards

In addition to the insufficient training, the report identifies several other reasons for the failure, including, “First, the quality of materials cannot be reliably obtained. For example, rice husks ash is a necessary input for a stove, but there is not a formal market for it, so producers must depend upon personal relations with ginnery operators. Second, many producers lack sufficient capital to purchase the appropriate materials, and therefore they substitute materials of lower quality. Third, there is not an agreement even among the most experienced producers on the established standards for a stove.”

The Market

Financially, it appeared that the cost of production and the cost of the units to households made it difficult for a producer to reconcile cost and expenses.

Institutional support

In the Institutional category, the report cites the “lack of a coordinated source of information about stove design, materials, training, and marketing of the products. The report recommended the establishment of an information center to meet this need.”

Policy void

Under the Policy rubric, the report identifies “the inability to obtain approved production sites for small-scale production is one of the most significant barriers that face ICS producers. There is no procedure for allocating small plots of businesses, and thus many ICS producers remain informal despite having business licenses. This creates instability and hinders the sector’s development.”

Barefoot and in the kitchen. Not!

Finally, in probing the challenges of scaling up the project, the report points to the absence of women in the marketing and production process. “The reported noted that women have not been actively involved in the promotion of the stoves, but since women are the primary users, their involvement is critical.”

Part of the reason why I felt compelled to write this post is because of Haiti, where the recent tragedy has unleashed a rush of programs to bring energy efficiency to the country’s devastated population.

We hope they are all well thought out and executed.

Kim