Dear Christina, Thanks for clearifying your options and ways forward. I just find it a bit od to spend time and efforts to promote LPG on this list, while most oil and gas companies, spend millions to promote their prodcts. I leave it to STATOIL to promote their fossil fuel products and still considered as an option as fuel for cooking in urban settings. I prefer to promote natural draft gasifiers and suitable biomass as fuel, still not so "well paid" as a marketing consultant for STATOIL or SHELL, but...........:) To connect rural people to the grid, will take decades and enormous amounts of money in investmens and will most likely not be affordable for 80 % of the population.I do not feel to much "worries" about the Multi National power companies, either.They will "manage". Thanks Otto Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 11:04:34 -0700 From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Stoves] The price of bottled gas
Hi Otto, I definately consider biomass to be sutable for low income households...I probably wouldn't be part of this list if I didn't. I think that the work people are doing on this listserv is vital and important. I spent two years working on using biomass for households. I believe that families need to be presented with various stove options. Just because I support the use of LPG doesn't mean I am against biomass. I am the most concerned with health impact. I just don't believe that on this listserv we should be promoting not using LPG. We are here to try and save lives and improve health. I think that Kirk Smiths opening comments at the Clean Cooking Forum are very clear about what steps need to be INCLUDED to reach our ultimate health goals. So I believe that we need to as Kirk Smith said, transition a portion of the people that are using purchased wood to gas/electricity. The most dificult task remains developing clean stoves that are affordable for families that don't have enough income to purchase fuel. My work is focused on designing affordable ways to distribute and adopt stoves, while focusing on a way to increrase houeshold education of HAP. We conducted a survey in Guatemala of 300 households to learn more about fuel use, fuel preference, stacking, fuel perception, willingness to pay, level of education about HAP, etc. Hope that helps to clear up any confusion. Best, Christina On Sunday, May 5, 2013, Otto Formo wrote: Cristina, I just noticed your comment on the statement to Paul O:"Are we not concerned about global warming each time that we switch on a modern gas stove?" " Are you saying that poor people shouldn't be allowed to use fossil fuels?" Do you realy consider biomass not suitable for the low income households?? I am using firewood from the nearby forest and considering instaling a pellet boiler, approximate 30 YEARS after the first Swede started to use his pellet and wood chip burner.Well, some people say Sweden has been better off, since VOLVO has moved to China, but still..............:) Norway is exporting 99% of LPG produced to US and Europe. Thanks Otto Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 01:41:33 -0700 From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Stoves] The price of bottled gas Hi Paul, Yes Guatemala does have a fair amount of agricultural residues. We worked on designing briquetting models and had a hard time with some of the available types of biomass. I am sure Richard could comment on this more since he started working here with some groups on designing a mix with the kinds of biomass that we have available. Also the infrastructure requirements for LPG and natural gas are different. Here is the FAO breakdown for Guatemala:http://faostat.fao.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?PageID=339&lang=en&country=89 The most abundant biomass available here is with sugarcane and banana growers. When we talked with a large company growing bananas they expressed that they were investigating ways to turn the flower plams (I think that is what they are called) into electricity. Again, the sugar cane growers I think are using the biomass for the same kinds of things. So Guatemala's two largest sources of biomass are or are in plans to be utilized for energy. Coffee husks might be one of the more available types. I remember reading something a year ago about coffee husks giving of a urine smell when gasified. Is this still true? Maybe someone can comment onthis. Richard might be able to comment some more since he has worked here with biomass. You say " Are we not concerned about global warming each time that we switch on a modern gas stove?" Are you saying that poor people shouldn't be allowed to use fossil fuels? I thought we already talked about this. I think its not fair to expect poor people to adopt ONLY biomass because we are concerned about global warming. We need to stop treating poor people with the expectation that they should shoulder the burden of adopting ONLY renewable fuels. We need to let these families have an affordable option to use what they perfer whether it be gas, biomass, etc. I think the work you are doing in Vietnam is great, but I urge you to be conscious of the differences in countries. Guatemala is not Vietnam...Guatemala is not India...China is not Tanzania. Best, Christina On Sunday, May 5, 2013, Paul Olivier wrote: Christina, How available is natural gas in Guatemala? Is it not made available to the people by oil and gas companies? No doubt it takes an incredible infrastructure to make it available to them in bottled form. I would imagine that Guatemala generates fairly important quantities of agricultural residues. Perhaps what you are really saying is that the infrastructure needed to make predictable biomass fuel available to the people of Guatemala is not yet in place. It is precisely such an infrastructure we should be working on. Whenever and wherever possible, in rich or poor countries alike, we should look for every opportunity to replace bottled gas with syngas. Why burn non-renewable fossil fuels, especially when agricultural residues could be transformed into predictable fuels that are thoroughly renewable? Are we not concerned about global warming each time that we switch on a modern gas stove? Thanks. Paul Olivier On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Christina Espinosa <[email protected]> wrote: In Guatemala, the current price_______________________________________________ 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://stoves.bioenergylists.org/ -- Christina Espinosa University of the Pacific '10 School of International Studies [email protected] _______________________________________________ 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://stoves.bioenergylists.org/
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