Dear LPG-Aware friends The topic is an important one. The total energy used cooking is a tiny fraction of fossil fuel use and it is far better applied to cooking than to other uses.
It is also worth mentioning that Africa flares as gas (totally wasted) 12 times as much energy as the continent uses. To hold an ideological position that 'using fossil fuels is wrong' is getting us nowhere. If you want to make a meaningful contribution to cooking solution discussions one of the sacrifices is making room for the realities of people's needs. There several solutions being pushed which are 'let them eat cake' ideas. LPG is widely used in Indonesia by the poor because of how it works and how much it costs. They do not use it exclusively, adding wood for heavy lifting like heating water. Fuel stacking. Bottled gas is a 'forever fuel' because it can be made from all sorts of things, not just a fraction of natural gas. Below 30 km in the ground natural gas forms naturally, with the longer chain molecules forming at ever-increasing depths. At 100 km and 1500 C C13H28 forms, as confirmed by laboratory experiments. The 'fossil' description is in need of a review as it becomes more obvious that these hydrocarbons are formed by natural processes. Whether they are or not, LPG (or other bottled gas) is one viable and strongly appreciated cooking solution and quite frankly, a better use of the resource than many other ways to deal with it. Indonesia chooses to subsidise LPG with taxes on other petroleum products (cross-subsidisation). Vietnam, apparently not. Subsidisation in Senegal of the 3 kg only has not worked out so well as the surrounding countries did not. All the cylinders disappeared across the border. Why? Because it is a highly desired fuel. Simple as that. Regards Crispin -----Original Message----- From: Paul Olivier <[email protected]> Sender: "Stoves" <[email protected]> Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:23:14 To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves<[email protected]> Reply-To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Stoves] [biochar] First report from Phnom Penh _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] 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://www.bioenergylists.org/ _______________________________________________ Stoves mailing list to Send a Message to the list, use the email address [email protected] 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://www.bioenergylists.org/
