[Stoves] Cooking on a Philips stove

[AJH]

On Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:17:44 +0200, Paul van der Sluis wrote:

>3) Status of the Philips project is that about 1000 stoves closely 
>ressembling my prototypes have been made and sold in India. Based on the 
>results it was decided to continue the project. That means a serious 
>industrialisation step is now underway. 

This is good to hear Philip and thanks for the cooking report.

I've snipped lots but grouped two of your comments below.

>7) All this beautifull technology costs money. And also the steel prices 
>have gone up to such an extent that it notices. To bring down the price to 
>a level where the masses who really need this stove can aford them carbon 
>credits could play a role. So we are looking into that.
 
>16) From my personal interest I know what 'terra preta' is, but I find it 
>hard to believe people will actively put charcoal in the soil in one place 
>on earth, while others are still digging coal......

That latter is my thought also but we're coming from a wealthy society
to whom fuel is a low portion of income. So it pays a large
oligarchic energy providing sector to work on a massive scale shifting
these vast quantities of oil and coal for the benefit of a billion or
so of us. Of the remaining 5 billion how many are customers of the big
energy giants? We know at least 2 billion of them cannot afford the
ante to get into the game. As you point out they cannot even afford a
stove that probably costs less than a meal in a restaurant for me.

What terra preta is offering is the ability of those non-importers of
fossil fuels to enter the game by picking up the crumbs that fall off
the effluent society's table. They cannot afford the coal, so are not
involved in digging it up. If the biochar sequestered in the soil can
approach the value of the coal, being used elsewhere, then they have
an access to an "export" which is a cash crop and does not involve
denuding the land like other cash crops for export do. This biochar
suddenly changes in value from that of a cheap woodfuel to that of the
unattainable price of industrial coal.

The trouble is the concept is attracting the interest of all the grant
sucking scammers that our world encourages such that the benefit is
unlikely to be delivered to the people at the biochar coalface.

AJH