Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Humble Cookstoves Reduce Deadly Toll

Humble Cookstoves Reduce Deadly TollFor as little as three dollars, stoves can save lives, mitigate climate change and reduce deforestation in developing countries.

Nearly half the world’s households, around three billion people worldwide, eat food cooked on traditional stoves and fires that kill around 1.6 million people a year-most of them children. A new report says that a global programme to produce half a billion improved stoves could convert the world’s poor to safer cooking, save hundreds of thousands of young lives a year, and at the same time cut global greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of up to one billion tonnes of CO2 a year.

The report, ‘Stoking up a cookstove revolution: the secret weapon against poverty and climate change’ published by the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, gives many examples of stoves programmes across the developing world that provide affordable, robust ‘improved’ stoves that burn less fuel, cook faster and approximately halve harmful smoke emissions.

Many use a chimney to remove smoke and gases from the kitchen, improving combustion. “Efficient stoves are the most direct and affordable way to address climate change, but we need millions and millions of them,” says Dean Still, director of Aprovecho Research Center in Oregon, USA. There are still hurdles to overcome, says the report. Each improved stove must be designed for local cooking practices and diets and studies show that cultural patterns sometimes prevent their easy acceptance and adoption.

According to the Ashden Awards it is essential to use social marketing and education to introduce the stoves sensitively and ensure they are designed according to local cooks’ needs and preferences. Many clean stoves are designed by social entrepreneurs for local manufacture, and non governmental organisations usually provide training to ensure they meet quality standards. Grameen Shakti in Bangladesh, for example, trains local technicians who build stoves in people’s homes, aiming to provide 10 million stoves in this way by 2015.

Substantial investment and support is needed to reach the half billion people who need efficient stoves. The report suggests that the carbon market can play a useful role in stove programme investment: “We calculate that improved cooking stoves can keep a tonne of CO2 out of the atmosphere for as little as $1 to $3 – an exceedingly good deal in a market where offsets can be sold for $20 to 30 a tonne,” says Fred Pearce, author of the report.

“We think the time has come for greater finance and political will to roll out stoves. Just as donors have grasped the value of rolling out bed-nets against malaria, we want to see improved stoves make a real impact on the poor. Better stoves improve health, save lives, help mitigate the effects of climate change while also saving money,” says Sarah Butler-Sloss founder director of the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy.
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E+Co to Market Improved Cook Stoves in Tanzania

E+Co to Market Improved Cook Stoves in Tanzania E+Co, a non governmental organisation based in Tanzania announced plans to introduce new cooking stoves in Tanzania in a mission to reduce indoor air pollution and greenhouse gases.

At a stakeholders meeting in Dar es Salaam held by the NGO, manager Erick Wurster said the project is meant to curb deforestation and improve air quality by manufacturing or importing charcoal and wood fuel efficient biomass stoves.

Mr Wurster explained that according to World Health Organisation (WHO), it is estimated that 27,000 deaths occur every year in Tanzania from firewood and charcoal stoves and destroying an average of 121,000 hectares of forests.

He said that air pollution from cooking with solid fuel on primitive stoves was a key risk factor in childhood acute respiratory infections such as pneumonia as well as many other respiratory, cardiovascular and ocular diseases.

He said the problem is set to amplify given that more than 95 per cent of Tanzania's population relies on dangerous and inefficient cooking fuel.

Mr Wurster said that the new technology will include `Envirofit stoves' and `Quality Jiko' to be imported from China. Later, he said, Tanzanians would be trained on how to manufacture the stoves locally. He said after introduction of the stoves, the project will extend to water filtration systems, replacing the need to boil water using firewood.

For the full story and source: The Citizen

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Thursday, March 18, 2010

Black Carbon Should Be A Prime Policy Target

Black Carbon Should Be A Prime Policy TargetBlack carbon soot, produced from incomplete combustion of diesel fuel and biomass, is one of the largest contributors to climate change apart from CO2 and should be a prime target of policymakers according to scientists and experts testifying at a hearing of the US House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming chaired by Congressman Edward Markey.

“Black carbon packs a powerful punch when it comes to climate change, absorbing solar radiation while in the atmosphere and also darkening the surfaces of snow and ice, contributing to increased melting in vulnerable regions such as the Arctic and Himalayas,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD).

“The good news is that it only stays in the atmosphere for up to a few weeks, making it an ideal target for achieving fast cooling through aggressive mitigation measures.”
Reducing black carbon emissions and other short-term climate forcers such as HFCs, methane, and tropospheric ozone can serve as a complement to CO2 reduction measures, which can take up to 1,000 years to produce significant cooling because of CO2’s long atmospheric lifetime.

“A drastic reduction in BC has the potential of offsetting CO2-induced warming for a decade or two. Effectively, BC reduction may provide a possible mechanism for buying time to develop and implement effective steps for reducing CO2 emissions,” said Dr V. Ramanathan from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, in his written testimony. Because developed countries have been successful in reducing black carbon emissions in recent years, the technology exists to help developing countries, such as China and India, significantly cut their soot emissions, through diesel-particulate filters for vehicles and cleaner-burning cookstoves.

Dr Ramanathan has spearheaded the Project Surya programme to bring solar cookstoves to India to assist in gathering additional data on the climate forcing potential of black carbon and its impact on local health – emissions of black carbon contribute to respiratory illness, the fourth leading cause of excess mortality in developing countries.


“Policymakers are beginning to take note of black carbon and other short-term climate forcers like HFCs, methane, and tropospheric ozone, where emissions reductions are cost-effective and can yield major climate and health benefits,” added Zaelke. “These 'fast-action' strategies are low-hanging fruits that need to be picked now to avoid the dangerous near-term consequences of abrupt climate change.”
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Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Challenge of an Energy Policy Framework

The Challenge of an Energy Policy FrameworkAs part of an effort to make available clean improved cookstoves to people who rely on traditional cookstoves and fuels which lead to Indoor Air Pollution, First Energy has been focused on delivering Oorja cookstoves to rural & tribal India. First Energy is an alternative energy startup that spun out of BP. In an interview with Think Change India, Mahesh Yagnaraman, founder of First Energy speaks more about their operations. Here are the excerpts.

What do you think is lacking in the sector of your organization’s interest in spite of your intervention? The policy framework for energy is very lop sided. Subsidies are making fuel unaffordable for the Government and the country. At the same time, the alternative energy subsidies have not led to any adoption of scalable, sustainable alternative energy development. In the case of the specific business of FE, the company faces twin challenges – cooking gas, LPG, is subsidised to the extent of Rs 290 per bottle and the wrong incentives for biomass power generation has driven up the prices of agri-waste artificially.

Who are the founders and management? What do they do? The founders are myself, Mukund Deogaonkar, Sreeram Thiagrajan and Raymond Moses. I have been the Managing Director of FE since 2006, Mukund is the Operations Director. Sreeram & Raymond are executive directors on the board and actively support the team through their guidance and coaching.

At the Alchemists Ark, Sreeram and Raymond consult for and add value in sales, marketing, supply chain to several MNCs and large corporates in India and abroad. Raymond is alumnus of IIT Kanpur while Sreeram is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad.

I have been at the helm of the business in India since its start in Feb 2006 bringing together an initial team of talented people, and setting up the company. I did my MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur and have a career spanning 19 years in different countries/continents and across strategy, sales, marketing, supply chain and IT implementation at Unilever, Castrol and BP.

Mukund Deogaonkar has been associated with the business from the start and has been the part of the team that was responsible for creating business concept and heads the operations. He has sales and marketing experience for over 17 years in fuels and lubricant industries and has strong proven ability to forge partnerships and relationships across the value chain.

How is it funded? The venture is self-funded at this point by the founders.

How do you measure your effectiveness? We use the two straightforward metrics of profitably and stoves sold.

Assuming this problem exists in similar forms throughout the world, what unique challenges do you face in fighting it here in India?
India’s energy framework is still very closed and not liberalised. The heavy subsidies make the entire thing very inefficient.

How do you intend to scale this model going forward? What are the future goals/plans for the venture? We aim to be profitable this year, at least at the per unit level. In the next 3 – 5 years we want to reach 1 million households. Beyond that, however, like 10 years out we have not thought that far.

What criteria do you use to identify partners/beneficiaries? We look at their ability to provide channel or route to market, share the same values and commitment in serving underserved markets, willingness to exercise patient capital, and have the ability to influence or shape policy.
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Creating An Aspiration for Stoves

Creating an Aspiration for StovesAs India's improved cook stoves program gains traction as a result of the efforts of government, stove manufacturers, global foundations and NGOs, the issue is getting focussed on a few basic challenges : Selling the Idea, Finding the Funds, Providing the Support, says a report "Better Burning, Better Breathing: Improving Health with Cleaner Cook Stoves" by Tina Adler in Environmental Health Perspectives.

This echoes the Three As that Shell Foundation is seeking to address through its Room to Breath Campaign, namely Awareness, Availability and Affordability .

According to Adler's report, the main objective of Indian consumers who purchase an improved cook stove is often quite different from the Indian government’s reason for promoting stoves. The government wants to improve the health of rural Indians. “But people buy [stoves] more for aspirational reasons,” says Mahesh Yagnaraman, CEO and managing director of First Energy. The energy-efficient stoves burn less, or burn different fuels, so women and children spend less time gathering solid fuel. As part of its original sales campaign, First Energy had doctors test the breathing capacity of interested customers to demonstrate how the old stoves had harmed their lungs. But instead of wanting a new stove, the prospective customers “just wanted medicine,” Yagnaraman says.

To sell stoves, you have to explain how the stoves save time and fuel and don’t dirty the kitchen with soot, says Anchan. Selling improved stoves is “very difficult,” he says. Consumers know the smoke irritates their eyes and makes them cough, but they don’t always comprehend the long-term impact of breathing high levels of smoke.

Customers “don’t trust any of these [stove] solutions very easily,” says Yagnaraman. No stove is entirely reliable, so some families will keep more than one type of stove in their homes, he says. Usage studies show that families cook at most about 70% of their meals on their improved cook stove, says Smith. In their studies, he and his colleagues attach microchip usage monitors to stoves instead of relying on self-reports from the family members. “If you ask people, they say, ‘Oh yes, we love it, we use it all the time,’” Smith says.

Significant customer support is key to any cook stove program’s success, experts say. “You can’t drop a stove into a household and walk away,” notes Rita Colwell, a public health expert at the University of Maryland at College Park and the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Envirofit provides that hands-on care, Anchan says. In addition to training customers how to use the stove and providing them with a manual, Envirofit calls customers to see how the stove is working for them.

Equally compelling is the issue of working up an industry where the cook stoves actually make a significant difference. Notes Adler, data from studies such as RESPIRE will help answer an important question facing clean-stove advocates and public health experts: how much must concentrations of smoke in homes be reduced in order to improve families’ health? When tested in the field, few of the improved cook stoves used in India achieve more than a 50–60% reduction in indoor air pollution levels and a 50% reduction in fuel use, says Simon Bishop, policy and communications manager at the Shell Foundation, which promotes improved cook stoves as a primary solution to indoor air pollution.

The full feature, Better Burning, Better Breathing: Improving Health with Cleaner Cook Stoves
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