Hillary Clinton Lauds India Cookstove Program

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted the efforts of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC) at an event held at the Women’s Working Forum in Chennai, India on July 20th, 2011. As reported in the GACC newsletter, Mrs. Clinton also praised the Government of India for its National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative.

Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan of the Sri Ramachandra University, a research expert on the health benefits of cleaner cookstoves, walked Mrs.Clinton through demonstrations of stoves being marketed by Alliance partners including Prakti Design, First Energy, Envirofit and TERI.

According to a press release from the US Consulate, Dr. Kalpana stressed to Mrs. Clinton that continued research and partnerships are vital for the programme’s success, and that it needs the same full-scale attention as given to public health programmes that address vaccinations and nutrition. The discussions with Mrs. Clinton also focused on new and advanced monitoring tools for this sector used in Dr. Balakrishnan’s laboratory.

Mrs. Clinton was quoted as saying in the US Consulate report:

"The women here today represent women all over the world who are by and large the biggest users and victims of cookstoves. We will work with people around the world to help develop clean cookstoves, help to manufacture them so they are affordable for you to buy them."

Mrs Clinton also announced that India’s apex bodies of commerce and industry, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), have signed up to the Alliance. Both organisations have come forward to support the adoption of clean cookstoves in India. According to the newsletter:

“CII has committed to link community efforts to its extensive industry network, help commercialise promising cooking technologies, and help integrate clean cookstoves into its other members’ projects.”

FICCI plans to support local cookstove SMEs, help to make cookstoves more accessible through microfinance, develop women’s employment options and support the GACC’s interaction with the Indian government.

Read the full report on: Sec. Clinton Highlights Clean Cookstoves in India
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Julia Roberts To Star In Saving Lives In Rural Kitchens

The Pretty Woman is getting her hands dirty and for a good cause. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves has announced that Academy Award winning actor Julia Roberts will serve as Global Ambassador, helping to bring attention to the deadly smoke from unsafe and inefficient cookstoves. 

According to a GACC Press Release, Julia Roberts will help raise awareness about the millions of people who face health effects, accidents or death in developing countries due to the reliance on traditional cookstoves and open fires that use wood, coal, charcoal, or animal waste for fuel. 

“Nearly 2 million people around the world – mostly women and children – die each year from an activity that many of us take for granted: cooking for our families,” Roberts is quoted as saying.

United Nations Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth.

Cookstove smoke contributes to a range of chronic illnesses and acute health impacts such as early childhood pneumonia, emphysema, lung cancer, bronchitis, cardiovascular disease and low birth weight.  The smoke from inefficient stoves continues to contribute to global climate change by producing harmful greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide and methane, and aerosols such as black carbon.  Reliance on biomass for cooking and heating also increases pressure on local natural resources and forces women and children to spend many hours each week collecting fire wood – an especially dangerous task for women and girls in refugee camps and conflict zones.

Africa's Carbon Credits Route To Clean Cookstoves

Suraj Wahab, co-founder of Toyola Energy Cookstoves in Ghana, Africa, "didn't see coal pots [stoves], but a market of four million [Ghanaians] no one was selling to." In Ghana, Toyola has been able to make inroads with its 40-percent-more-efficient models, sold for prices as low as $7. Toyola sold roughly 140,000 cookstoves to households and "chop bars," or local restaurants, since 2006, including 51,000 stoves last year, says a report in National Geographic, "Protecting Health And The Planet With Clean Cookstoves".

One of the reasons why Toyola has been successful is that it has benefited from connecting the reduced emissions from cook stoves to the larger global issue of climate change and earn carbon credits, becoming only the second cook stove project in the world to do so.

The Toyola business model combines local practices with global linkages. Toyola operates with 200 employees in a decentralized operation across five locations in Ghana and one in Togo. The issue of reaching the last mile is addressed by "stores" which are trucks that deliver cookstoves and has sales activists who sell both the concept and the product. The big A of affordability gets handled often through credit and by encouraging savings.

At the global level, Toyola is an outcome of a USAID cookstove training program in which the founders Wahab and Ernest Kyei had participated. The initial investment -- and the potential for carbon credits to keep down the cost of stoves and to finance growth -- came from US-based E+Co. A carbon credit of up to $20 per stove more than offsets the higher production costs of building stoves with ceramic liners, and provides funds for expansion.

According to the National Geographic report, Toyola thus far has received revenues from the sale of 51,230 tons of carbon credits for cookstove use between August 31, 2007 and September 8, 2009.

Photo Courtesy: E+Co
Read the full story on: Protecting Health and the Planet With Clean Cookstoves

"A Woman's Issue, A Children's Issue, An Economic Issue"

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves was covered on “The Martha Stewart Show” to raise awareness about the unique role clean cookstoves play in saving lives, improving livelihoods, empowering women, and combating climate change. Martha encouraged her viewers to join the clean cookstove movement.

Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), appeared on the show to explain how clean cookstoves can deliver significant environmental and health benefits in the developing world. Jackson said, "This is a women's issue, a childrens' issue, and an economic issue."

Aaron Sherinian, representative of the Alliance of the United Nations Foundation stated that "Cooking shouldn't kill, but for many women and families around the world it does. Everyone can get involved and tell the world that this issue matters and should be at the top of the global agenda."

Shell Pledges $6 Million For Global Clean Stove Initiative

Royal Dutch Shell plc. (Shell) has announced a donation of $6 million to support a global initiative to prevent deaths and cut greenhouse gas emissions caused by the smoke from traditional cooking stoves.

“Indoor air pollution is one of the most significant energy poverty issues facing the developing world,” said Peter Voser, Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell plc. “With three billion people worldwide using open fires or traditional stoves in their homes, this initiative is a step forward in making a huge and tangible difference to their health and environment. So I would urge others to support this initiative – a clean burning cooking stove for each home isn’t that much to ask.”

Shell’s donation, staged over three years, will be the largest private contribution backing the work of the newly launched Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), a public-private initiative to support the large-scale use of clean burning domestic stoves in developing countries. Launched by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, GACC aims for an additional 100 million homes, roughly 20% of the affected population, to have an efficient cooking stove by 2020. The annual CO2 reduction for each energy-efficient stove is approximately 1.5 tonnes, so the cumulative effect of 100 million new stoves would be approximately 150 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

Manufacturers of clean stoves currently face difficulties getting their products to the people who need them, and with no internationally recognised global standards, more needs to be done to let people and communities know about the dangers they are facing.

Shell’s commitment will be tackling these problems, specifically by:

• Helping to develop global standards and stove testing protocols, to ensure customers get a quality product that has been approved and tested on the ground in each local market;

• Enhancing routes to market, tackling the issues of affordability and accessibility;

• Assisting with development of innovative financing mechanisms that would enable manufacturers to potentially benefit from carbon-credits, and;

• Raising awareness of the health and environmental risks caused by the smoke from inefficient cooking stoves.

Read Press Release: Shell cooks up cleaner future with $6m donation for global clean stove initiative
Photo Courtesy: Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves