The Basics of Wood Burning Stoves: A Case for Standards or Rating Systems?

Many people interested in better stoves know something about fire, smoke, health and new ideas.  However, to explain these on a more fundamental level that is understood by all can be difficult.  Therefore to explain the relationship between health and smoke, I turn to the late comedian Steve Allen who said that “Asthma doesn't seem to bother me any more unless I'm around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar.”  For those who are promoting stoves innovations, I quote Mark Twain who says “The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.” 

More seriously, I recently came across this nice brochure on space heating stoves that has been published by the California Environmental Protection Agency.  I was struck by this brochure because in a very simple way it publicizes the issue of smoke and health, the need for standards,  the basic principles of combustion and even the alternatives to wood stoves including gas and electricity.    These are many of the same issues that the clean cooking community today is attempting to communicate to the general public.  This brochure highlights the fact that improved heating stoves in the United States and other developed countries are now very efficient and burn very cleanly compared to past stoves.  But this was not always the case. 

Painting of Old Heating Stove in School

On a personal note, I can remember old coal stoves used to heat "temporary" small classrooms built to accommodate a sudden rise in student populations.  These "potbelly" coal heating stoves were similar to the wood burning stove in the picture.  At the time in western Pennsylvania coal was king and this was at the very end of the time period when people would heat with traditional coal stoves.  Was it smoky? Yes. Was it energy efficient? No. Did it give good even heat?  No.  Wast it durable? Yes. Was it safe? Yes. Was it cheap?  Yes.  Now of course schools are heated with modern systems. 

Even now there are legacy fireplaces and wood stoves that burn warmed air in the house which in turn draws in cold air from the outside.  Thus, the old traditional space heating stoves in developed countries are somewhat analogous to open cooking fires in developing countries.  The rather important exceptions are that the cooking fires and traditional cookstoves in developing countries typically are built of local materials by those who use them and they also do not have chimneys.

Facing Rural Energy Realities in Bangladesh

Adult Literacy Class, Bangladesh by Shehzad Noorani

People often forget that once Bangladesh was close to being the poorest country on the planet. Things certainly have changed in recent years. Bangladesh has always had policies for open trade that have helped the country become an exporter of manufactured goods, much of which has resulted from allowing investments by multinational firms.  Generally economic growth has been very positive in recent years.

The country also has a very ambitious and successful grid rural electrification program that was modeled after the USA rural electric cooperatives which is considered a “best practice.” Even for those rural households distant from the electricity grid, since 2002 there has been a very successful rural energy fund that is administered by a government bank. This fund along with prominent non-governmental organizations such as Grameen Shakti (part of Grameen Bank) and BRAC have been very active in promoting solar household systems for basic electric lighting and communications services for those out of reach from the grid electricity system. In recent years they also have been expanding to other rural energy technologies such as biogas and improved cookstoves.

Much more below....

Cooking with LPG: Climate and Poverty Issues

What is the largest improved stove program in the developing world? The answer may surprise you. It is the Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) stove. The use of LPG worldwide has been growing for many years. It is not a renewable fuel like biomass energy, but it is clean burning and provides much greater efficiency than even the best improved biomass stoves. For those not familiar with LPG, it is quite similar to propane.

Retail LPG Use in India in Millions: Industry Source

LPG is quite commonly used in urban areas of developing countries and is becoming increasingly common in rural areas. In India alone since 1985 the petroleum industry reports that over 100 million households have switched from other cooking sources to LPG. Today even close to 20% of rural household are using LPG mostly for quick heating such as water boiling, and this amounts to about 30 million households. Not only is LPG subsidized in India, but it has become more widely available over the years.

India has had an aggressive LPG promotion campaign for years and just recently announced that there will be a program to provide free stoves to households below the poverty line. The subsidies no doubt are expensive for the government and as the program continues to expand one can question whether such subsidies are justifiable given the ready acceptance of LPG by the mostly high and middle income consumers. But one also might just imagine the positive health impacts of the widespread substitution of LPG for fuelwood. Cooking with LPG gives off minimum pollution and alleviates indoor air pollution.

LPG Cooking in Hyderbad India: by D. Barnes

One little understood fact is that LPG is used mainly by middle to high income families, but it also has indirect impacts on poor urban households who do not even use it. Why is this? The main reason is the pattern of dynamics of energy pricing. Obviously high taxes on LPG raise its overall price and conversely subsides lower the price. The price of fuelwood for cooking quite often mimics price of LPG or kerosene in large urban areas after taking into consideration energy efficiency. Poor people in urban areas generally purchase biomass fuels such as fuelwood or charcoal, so high LPG prices mean high prices for biomass energy. The poor spend quite a bit of their income on energy; it can be as high as high as 15 to 20 percent. Thus, the price of biomass energy is obviously very important for their welfare.

Concerning climate change, encouraging the substitution of LPG for biomass fuels actually may be a winning prospect. It actually takes just over 11 kilograms of wood to provide the same cooking heat as one kilogram of LPG due to higher energy content and greater efficiencies of gas stoves. After some further conversions, for the same cooking task wood burned in open fires actually gives off 4 times more CO2 compared to LPG. It is true that some wood is from renewable sources, but do we really know how much? Also, is it really relevant? Perhaps, but the CO2 is going into the air regardless of its source.

This also does not mean that we should give up on making biomass stoves that are less polluting and more or efficient (see previous blog on new generation of improved stoves). Some new stoves give off levels of pollution that similar to using LPG. There is also a role for cooking with other fuels and technologies such as biogas or perhaps even alcohol in developing countries.

The ultimate goal is to alleviate energy poverty and there are many ways to do it. This might even include the promotion of LPG for cooking. What do you think?

poll by twiigs.com

For more continue reading below.

Improved Biomass Stoves: The Next Generation

There is a new sheriff in town. Today around the world there is an entirely new and innovative variety of improved stoves that are being manufactured in factories or workshops and sometimes backed by large international companies. These new types of stoves generally are made of quite durable materials that will last for 5 to 10 years or even longer and some come with guarantees. The goal of the marketing of these new stoves is to improve energy efficiency of cooking, to lower indoor air pollution, and to reduce labor or cash expenses required for cooking for the poorest half of the world’s population. The idea is to supply the nearly 3 billion people around the world that still use biomass energy with a stove that that is more modern and efficient than the traditional ones that they now use. Will these new stoves bring order to the wild west of improved stoves programs characterized by hundreds of models made out of vastly different local materials and produced by local artisans?

Traditional Stove in India: Photo by S. Desai

Stoves have existed since the beginning of human history. They have come in various sizes and styles, having been adapted to myriad cultures and food preparation methods. As society has progressed, more sophisticated stove models have been developed. Today’s modern kitchen reflects the many types of standardized and specialized cooking devices available from coffee and tea pots to toasters and gas cooktops. In contrast, the poor in developing countries still burn biomass energy in what amounts to open fires. The smoke produced by these primitiave stoves has been associated with a number of diseases, the most serious of which is acute respiratory illness such as bronchitis and pnemonia.

Envirofit Stove Model G-3300 in India: Photo by Envirofit

The development of improved biomss stoves has witnessed several overlapping stages over the last 30 years and today there are actually three types of programs around the world. One type of improved stove is locally made by small businesses or the even those in household members after they trained. Such stoves are very inexpensive at less than 10 dollars each and sometimes even less than 5 dollars. These artisan-made stoves provide relatively good performance when new, but performance degrades over the short one or two year live of the stove. The second type of stove involves manufactured parts, which are assembled on site with local materials. These stoves are still inexpensive but are a bit more expensive and more durable than the artisan stoves. There will be a later blog on these two types of stoves.

Stovetec Stove: Photo by Aprovecho

The competition is heating up for the “next generation” of stoves that are manufactured in their entirely in factories and workshops world. They include efficient biomass stoves, alcohol stoves, stoves that use pellets, and others. Some of the world’s largest companies have become involved including Shell Foundation, Bosch Siemens, Phillips, British Petroleum and others. There are two interesting examples for wood stoves including the Envirofit stoves and the Stovetec produced by Aprovecho. Others innovations include the Worldstove, First Energy’s Oorja Stove, Gaia’s Dometic (Gaia project), Bosh-Siemens Protos stove, the Onil stove in Guatemala, and the Justa stove in Honduras. A very interesting new initiative by the Government of India endorses the concept of manufactured stoves and implementation is in the planning stages.

The international donors have been slow to embace or support these new generaton of stoves and admittedly this is still an incomplete picture. However, it may just take some time for the realization to set in that such programs can probably be as important as increasing electricity access in terms of improved health and quality of life such as less fuel collection, shorter cooking time, reduced releases of carbon, and less pressure on local forests.

Its nice that there is more international competition in developing new products. However, the question is should there be more interational attention to this problem?

More resources below.

Gender, Energy and Development

Energy is often thought of as poles, wires, and transmission lines. However, the only reason for this infrastructure exists is that they provide some sort of service to industry, businesses, and households. The same can be said for gas pipelines, large storage tanks for liquid petroleum gas and other types of energy. People, businesses, and other organizations pay for all of these energy services. That is the only reason that they exist at all.

Fuelwood Collection S. India by  D Barnes

So it is somewhat surprising that gender is often overlooked in the provision of energy services in developing counries. Electricity certainly has an impact on women and girls in developing countries through making the home environment more livable, encouraging girls to attend school, and reducing household drudgery. Rural electrification and electricity access now is recognized as a significant priority in many developing countries, especially those in S. Asia and Africa. But while attention often is paid to the wires and poles, is there enough attention to appliances operated by women including fans, small refrigerators, spice grinders, rice cookers, toasters, and others?

Also somewhat overlooked in the energy development business is that women and girls also can be the main suppliers of household energy in developing countries. There have been numerous studies documenting that woman and to a lesser extent men spend much time collecting most of their cooking fuels from the local environment. This fuel collection is time consuming and diverts time from both income earning or other household activities. In addition, the literature on the adverse health impacts of indoor air pollution resulting from burning biomass fuels on open fires or low quality stoves has become very well documented during the last 20 years. Finally, cooking fuels in developing countries contribute about 1 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year, and yet there is barely a mention of household fuels in the climate change debate.

See more below the break.