BP Designs Biofuel-LPG Flex Fuel Cook Stove and Distribution Scheme for Rural India
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 10.19.05
This announcement by the BP Group embodies both a technology and a "service product" which will reduce indoor smoke exposure and overall CO2 emissions associated with cooking. Users can respond to time demands, price fluctuations, and fuel availability as well as follow traditional recipes that benefit from a wood heat. Because cooking and fuel gathering are often "women's work" in developing countries, the time saved from fuel gathering hopefully frees some time for education or the running of small businesses. From the Hundu Business Line comes the report from which the following excerpts are provided.
STRESSING the need for clean and affordable energy sources for cooking, the BP Group Chief Executive, Lord John Browne, said BP has developed a hybrid appliance integrating liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and a biomass burner to reduce indoor air pollution. Addressing the captains of the Indian industry, Lord Browne said, "We have developed a hybrid appliance that allows people to choose which fuel they use."..."The offer includes home delivery of the appliance, LPG cylinder and micro finance options for the initial capital cost," he said.
To support the business, the company has developed a mechanism of getting the products into the market involving innovative distribution models, Lord Browne said. The business model will also help provide income-generating opportunities to people by giving them a chance to run a small business as entrepreneurs and dealers.
"We are starting to develop this business but our aspiration is to make it quite substantial so that it could reach perhaps 20 million households across rural India by 2020."
Footnotes:
1.) At the time of this posting, no photograph of the hybrid fuel stove was available.
2.) The image shown is of a woman cooking at night with a pump kerosene stove...a generic reminder that the often praised solar cooker is of little help for the evening meal.
cool story! love that microfinancing angle. but aside from grooving on the infant steps; it does make me wonder.. is this what we are going to see more of with these new clean development mechanisms ? oil companies helping 3rd world people stop their pollution? and with fancy hybrid solutions!! wow. sorta.
you know someday soon they will hopefully learn that they can get more bang for their buck with more appropriate technologies
....like, frinstance, you had a picture a while ago of a solar-power granma (who's site, BTW is here ) and she's responsible for sending over 10,000 solar ovens to african communities. Oh, and helped develop rocket stoves (now in 20 countries and made for pennies) One granma. Not a huge billion dollar oil, sorry, 'beyond petrolium' company
....there are tons of other easy and affordable technologies out there (like this cool award winning turd-burner, the Vesto) that a company like BP can latch onto and spread easily... without 3 years r&d, and a new LPG rural infrastructure pipeline, and all the rest of the extra crap that is just not needed
...i mean you gotta like the side of BP that makes sooo many solar panels, but also acknowlege that that is a tiny part of their business, and that after a decade of baby steps, its time for them to start taking strides.. at least to impress this grumpy old hippy. (and hey it's not just me.. they did come in second place in the anual Greenwash Awards )
GrunpyOldHippy,
Do not forget that BP, though having an international responsibility to all, is charged by its shareholders to make a profit. This means that any business venture it undertakes should be profitable.
I for one am happy to see any positive movement by industry. I feel they should be commended for their progress (progress that the other oil companies are not making) rather than chastised that they must do more.
==== authors' response follows ===== Speaking of encouragement, we'll know that US political culture is advancing when a US-based multinational oil company takes similar steps. There aren't many left, but I keep watching for signs. There's good reason to think it will happen. The world's poor do, after all, represent the single largest untapped market. Selling them something that makes their and our lives better (like this stove) is certainly superior to selling things that make them worse (like our inefficient US-designed cars). Make the right marketing choices now to help the poor transition to middle class status, and they'll remember the good brand that helped them. That's the playing fielf of the sustainable future.know what?? i have had BPSolar execs come down to an environmental film festival because they were excited to see themselves portrayed in a positive light in one of my documentaries on climate change... i have cheered them when they deserve it (they *were* the largest manufacturer of PV a few years back...)
but i hope that people here do not accept cow towing to any random movement that they make. especially not when its wasteful, inneficient or just plain ass-backwards.
the truth is that the rural poor in india and bangladesh and elsewhere have a bitch of a time finding LPG... it's ludicrous to suggest that this is how they have to clean up their act. and like i said before what they are doing may be beneficial and less wasteful than what is being done now, but truth be told it is way less efficient than (many, but at least) the three technologies PEOPLE ARE EXPORTING TO THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES, TODAY, mentioned above (not some day, or by 2020)
sure knock the hippy for not dancing lke a happy monkey over any tidbit that may or may not change anything.... but while you are doing that, keep an eye open for real technologies that can make real change. There is no reason why BP didn't go for a plan to send out 1,000,000 solar ovens (oh right-- no proprietary technology there) shareholders demand profit but you can also profit from sending out millions and millions of sappropriate technologies.
and if you look at the link i provided for clean development mechanisms, this is a serious charge... that dirty polluting people-killing companies are going to simply offset the bad they do here by offering "clean" technologies elsewhere, can be helpful, but not if it retains the patronizing mentality where it knows best what other people need, and espedcially when done with a tenet that these are future markets and so hwo do we keep them coming back for more? (its supposed to be a technology transfer, to offset the evil being done back home, not a way to further expand ones markets)
hey sorry for being such a downer.... tell you what, I'll borrow someone's prius for an hour, fill up at BP and do a victory lap for them, ok? happy now?
Um... is that women setting her hand on fire? What's the deal with the huge open flame?
=== author's response follows ===
If you ever lit a kerosene stove or lantern you may have noticed that if you overfill the tank, overpump a bit, and then light with the jet wide open it takes off similarly . You have to dial back on the fuel flow and let the injector ports preheat the fuel. After a bit you can turn it up and the flame will be blue and lower. This one looks like an especially crude design, however.