UC Berkeley Sensors Takes Top Prize in Vodafone Innovation Project

A path breaking model of “stove use monitoring system” (SUMS) developed by UC Berkeley was awarded a first prize of $300,000 in the 2010 Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project. The Foundation selects three wireless projects,with the potential to save lives and solve critical global challenges. The winners were selected from more than 100 qualified applications from universities and NGOs from across the United States of America.

The "100 Million Stoves" device is a simple wireless SUMS,  powered with the excess heat of the stove, which can be attached to the millions of new low-emission stoves being used in developing regions. The device will record usage data and send them to a dedicated reader carried by someone in the village making a monthly walk through. The cumulated data will then be uploaded via cell phone to a central database for systematic processing. The low-cost technology will allow the assessment of household energy programs, enable feedback from users, and provide transparent verification of carbon credits.

According to Kirk. R. Smith, Professor of Global Environmental Health, UC Berkeley, "The wireless SUMS can be deployed in a careful sub-sample across millions of households in a statistically valid manner. Unlike household visits, the monitors provide unique and valuable information that can be scaled to millions."

The "100 Million Stoves" team consists of Smith's research group, three small Berkeley companies — BioLite, Electronically Monitoring Ecosystems, and Berkeley Air Monitoring Group — and the Department of Environmental Health Engineering at Sri Ramachandra University in Chennai, India. Together they have built prototypes of the wireless SUMS, and the Vodafone award will help bring the project to the next stage of implementation and scale. The team plans to use the device in trials and its initial application will be in India as part of the country's National Biomass Cook-stoves Initiative.

"Soon it will be ready for use by groups around the world wishing to validate carbon credits for stove programs on the international carbon market. In addition, it can also serve as the basis for other devices to remotely and efficiently monitor the use and effectiveness of household health and energy interventions for research, program evaluation, and user feedback.", says Professor Smith.

Shimoga's Village Health Workers Campaign on Indoor Air Pollution

In a pathbreaking initiative, Shell Foundation today joined hands with village level health workers, the Anganwadi workers, in the Shikaripur Taluk of Shimoga district to spread awareness on the dangers of smoke in the kitchen and propagate the adoption of improved cook stoves. The Anganwadi system is managed by Anganwadi workers from the community who are trained in health, nutrition and child-care. She is in-charge of an Anganwadi, which covers a population of 1000. A group of Anganwadis is supervised and guided by a Child Development Projects Officer (CDPO). There are about 300 such workers in the Shikaripur Taluk who report to the Taluk Health Officer and CDPO.

Over the past two days, nearly 100 anganwadi workers have been trained to take the IAP campaign to over a 100 villages of Shikaripur Taluk, effectively covering 100,000 people over the next one month. Each Anganwadi worker has a coverage of around one thousand people.

Says Simon Bishop, Head of Policy and Communications, Shell Foundation, "More than 400,000 people in India die each year from toxic fumes inhaled while cooking on open fires - yet most affected households don't even realise the smoke is bad for them. Furthermore, few people realise so-called 'Improved Cook stoves' can dramatically
reduce fumes. They also use at least 40% less wood, which means people can either save money on fuel or save time collecting it. We are delighted to be partnering with the District Administration - and its Anganwadi workers - to raise awareness about smoke and how it can best be tackled."

The launch of the campaign brings together efforts that have included support from the Karnataka Chief Minister's Office, various ministries of the state government, the district authorities, the Zilla Parishad and the Community health officers. Probably for the first time ever, we have had the Anganwadi system, the Community Health Officers, the DC’s office, the Zilla Parishad, the State Ministries,

The campaign conceived and initiated by the Shell Foundation is being run with support from stove manufacturers Envirofit and SELCO who are training and providing stoves for demonstrations.

This route to market is expected to provide yet another avenue for category education as well as outreach for adoption of stoves.


Based on the results of the current phase, the campaign can be extended to all the 2000 anganwadi workers in Shimoga district. The first batch of 100 anganwadi workers were picked by the CDPO in the taluk to launch the exercise.

Workers were trained in batches of 50 on the health issues of indoor air pollution and the formats of communicating the issue to village people.

Thereafter, they were also trained in stove demonstrations. The angawadi workers would now take the campaign on their own to their villages and provide the campaign grassroot outreach.

This is part of the Shell Foundation's wider 'Room to Breathe' campaign, which aims to save lives, improve livelihoods and reduce climate change emissions by tackling kitchen smoke.

Humble Cookstoves Reduce Deadly Toll

For 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.