"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."

Malta Joins Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves

As part of its 2010 fast-start climate finance pledge, the government of Malta donated €125,000 ($165,000) to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, an initiative led by the United Nations Foundation. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership, which aims at replacing traditional cookstoves with modern and clean cookstoves in developing countries, according to a report in the Malta Independent Online and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

The announcement was made at a signing ceremony in Cancun, Mexico, by George Pullicino, Minister for Resources and Rural Affairs, and Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, which leads the work of the Alliance.

“Malta is proud to be making this financial contribution to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves as part of its 2010 fast-start finance pledge made in the context of the Copenhagen Accord,” said Minister Pullicino. “We fully support the work being undertaken by the Alliance to promote the adoption of clean and efficient cooking solutions in the developing world, particularly in neighbouring Africa. We appreciate that this will help reduce the exposure of women and children to unhealthy cooking smoke, and lead to a reduction in the use of fuel, including firewood, as well as in the emission of gases that contribute to climate change.”

“Malta is making a welcome and needed contribution to assist the mission of the Alliance, pursuant to its national pledge to support climate finance mechanisms,” said United Nations Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth. “These resources will help the Alliance develop standards for clean stoves, support climate and health research, and mount an advocacy campaign to raise awareness about the severe health and environmental impacts from dirty cookstoves and the toxic smoke they create. Sustainable technologies, such as clean and efficient cookstoves, are essential in order to expand access to energy while drastically reducing the pollution it produces.”

Malta joins Germany, the United States, Denmark, Peru and Norway as government supporters of the Alliance, in addition to Shell, the Shell Foundation, Morgan Stanley and half a dozen U.N. agencies, including the World Health Organization, World Food Programme and UN Environment Programme.

Photo Courtesy: Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves

The Jompy Stove: World Challenge Finalist

The Jompy Stove which allows boiling water and cooking simultaneously made it to the 12 finalists for the 6th World Challenge, shortlisted by BBC World News and Newsweek, in association with Shell.

The World Challenge is a global competition aimed at finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grassroot level. This year, there were 800 nominations, 12 finalists, one winner and two runners up. The finale this year of World Challenge 2010 was filmed in Amsterdam with Zeinab Badawi announcing the winners.

The Winner of the Challenge is a project from Philippines and the two runners up projects are from Peru and Guatemala.

The Jompy Stove is a lightweight and inexpensive stove-top device that sits between a cooking pot or an open flame to rapidly heat water. Invented by David Osborne, a plumber from Scotland, this simple technology could save millions who die from drinking contaminated water. The Jompy is a win-win technology, where householders can cook a meal whilst killing bacteria in dirty water at the same time. Gravity pushes the water through the Jompy, and it even works on simple three stone fires, making it perfect for use in the bush. It's now being supplied to Uchumi supermarkets in Kenya.

The Jompy is a highly effective water boiler that allows the consumer to carry out two tasks at the same time: boiling water whilst cooking.This unique product (weighing just 600g) can boil 1 litre of water every 45-60 seconds with the water reaching temperatures of up to 86 degrees, drastically reducing the amount of fuel required; as well as providing a means of clean hot water to improve sanitation.

Photo Courtesy: World Challenge 
Website:  "The Jompy" Water Boiler
Read the full story on:  World Challenge Finalists Announced;

Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves Engages Cancun Conference

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves' presence at the Cancun conference is a good marker of the extent to which there is increasing recognition of the role played by inefficient combustion of biomass for domestic energy. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and the United Nations Foundation in Cancún will be hosting a breakfast roundtable on Black Carbon, Cookstoves, and Climate Change on Wednesday, December 8.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico started on 29th November, 2010 with calls for commitment and compromise, as per a Press Release, issued by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

As per the Press Release, Mexican President Felipe Calderón cited last year’s hurricane in Mexico, this year’s floods in Pakistan and fires in Russia as examples of increasing incidences of natural disasters brought about by climate change and already affecting the poorest and most vulnerable.

“Climate change is an issue that affects life on a planetary scale”, he said.

Carbon dioxide is not the only kind of pollution that contributes to global warming. Other potent warming agents include three short-lived gases — methane, some hydrofluorocarbons and lower atmospheric ozone — and dark soot particles. The warming effect of these pollutants, which stay in the atmosphere for several days to about a decade is already about 80 percent of the amount that carbon dioxide causes, as per the New York times.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, professor of atmospheric physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and David G. Victor, professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, writing in The New York Times say from a political point of view, the most appealing greenhouse emissions to reduce are ozone and soot, because they contribute so much to local air pollution. After all, people everywhere care about the quality of the air they breathe and see — even if most of them are not yet very worried about global warming. A desire to clean up the air is a rare point of commonality between developing and industrialized nations.

 Energy poverty alleviation will come into play to decide the strategies to slow global warming. The opportunities to reduce black carbon emissions will be discussed. The emissions come mostly from the inefficient and incomplete burning of biomass and unimproved diesel engine emissions, as per the Charcoal Project.

In the course of 2010, all 37 industrialised nations and 42 developing countries, including the largest emerging economies, submitted targets and voluntary actions to reduce or limit greenhouse gas emissions, as per the Press Release.

Photo courtesy:  United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Better Energy Makes For Lesser Energy Use

As per a report in National Geographic, in two small villages on Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast, a project to improve electricity service had a remarkable side benefit—household energy use actually dropped nearly 30 per cent. When efficient compact-fluorescent (CFL) lightbulbs were added to the mix, energy savings surpassed 40 percent.

“It shows that you can meet development objectives for the poor and climate objectives for all of us at the same time,” said Daniel Kammen, chief technical specialist for renewable energy and energy efficiency at the World Bank, and co-author of an analysis published in the weekly journal Science,The Energy-Poverty-Climate Nexus.

As per National Geographic.com, the study set out to demonstrate a method for measuring both the climate and financial benefits of making investments that improve delivery of reliable, affordable energy for poor communities. Mobilizing such investment is crucial, with 1.5 billion people around the world living without electricity. Another 1 billion people have unreliable electricity, and nearly half the global population relies on unhealthy and polluting wood, charcoal, and dung stoves for cooking.

The United Nations said in a report co-written with the International Energy Agency that its goals for fighting extreme poverty will fall short unless nations also work to bring electricity and modern, safe cooking technology to the “energy-poor” people around the world.

The analytical method outlined in the paper is “very helpful for certain contexts, particularly for looking at how increasing energy efficiency can help support energy access," says Richenda Van Leeuwen, senior director on energy and climate for the the United Nations Foundation, a non-profit that supports the work of the UN. She said she especially sees potential for the approach to be adapted for addressing the global problem of primitive cookstoves. Inefficient wood and waste stoves, used by 3 billion people around the world, create black carbon particulate emissions, a large contributor to climate change, and have a devastating impact on health—especially for women and children.

“There is really room for more research in this area for both traditional cooking and kerosene-based lighting, which both emit smoke,” Van Leeuwen said. “You could begin to monetize the savings of fewer trips to clinics, and fewer treatments for acute pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses that are common among people breathing in cookstove smoke day in and day out.”

Van Leeuwen said the approach is among those being weighed by the new public-private partnership, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, the United Nations; global energy company Shell and its Shell Foundation; investment bank Morgan Stanley; and the nonprofit SNV-Netherlands Development Organization.

Kammen’s new study underscores the importance of doing a similar analysis for the world’s poor, who can spend more than 30 percent of their income on energy services. In wealthy countries, only 2 to 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product is spent on energy. “Because energy services are often expensive,” said Kammen, “finding ways to provide them more efficiently benefits the poor more than the rich.”

Representative photograph: 2009 UNEP Sasakawa Prize Co-Laureates
Read the full story on: Fighting Poverty Can Save Energy, Nicaragua Project Shows

Grant For PHI For Clean Cookstove Technology

The Public Health Institute (PHI) has been awarded a major grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) focused on implementing clean cookstove technology, according to a PHI Press Release.

The $980,000 award will support planning and field work for the next year on cookstoves in Kenya, Guatemala and India, as well as joining the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, the National Institutes of Health and CDC in planning a global clean cookstoves workshop.

This grant is one of the first provided by a U.S. Government agency under a new initiative for clean cookstoves announced at the Clinton Global Initiative on September 21 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Secretary Clinton said that the U.S. government would provide at least $50 million over the next five years toward a global goal to put 100 million fuel-efficient stoves into use worldwide by 2020.

The Public Health Institute, a California-based nonprofit, has been generating and promoting research, leadership and partnerships to build capacity for strong public health policy, programs, systems and practices for 40 years.

“We are delighted to implement one of the U.S. government’s first large-scale efforts on clean cookstoves,” said PHI President and CEO Mary Pittman. “This project will allow PHI to help advance public health knowledge and practices around the use of cleaner cookstove technologies around the world and their impact on air quality.”

“There is no silver bullet when it comes to clean cookstove technology,” said Pittman. “We understand that there remain significant challenges in the design, manufacture, distribution, and measurement of clean burning stoves. But putting fuel efficiency and safe technology in the hands of millions of people is an attainable goal, and PHI is the right organization to work with CDC and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves on this critical initiative.”

Read Press Release Public Health Institute Award to Advance Clean Cookstove Technology
Photo Courtesy: Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

Spreading Clean Air

An IHT Special Report says that the push for clean cookstoves to reduce indoor air pollution was elevated from a public health backwater to a high place on the global agenda with the kick off of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves in New York, at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Detailing the journey of Envirofit in its quest to provide improved cookstoves that reduce harmful emissions by 80 per cent, the report notes that Envirofit has sold more than 150,000 portable cookstoves in India, priced at $12 to $25.

Envirofit makes 90 percent of its sales in India. But it started in business in Africa this year, in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia and other countries. Plans are in the works to expand in Latin America.

In spite of the support from Mrs. Clinton, “plenty of work remains in raising awareness about indoor air pollution and making clean cookstoves more efficient and affordable,” said Simon Bishop, head of policy and communications at the Shell Foundation. Global standards must be implemented and governments need to promote testing and certification of clean stoves. “This is an infant industry. We are going to need a lot of Envirofits,” Mr. Bishop said. “The world needs more energy but less carbon dioxide.”

Read the report A Healthier, More Efficient Way to Cook by Amy Yee

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