At the recently concluded Clinton Global Initiative, one of the more exceptional side events was the action workshop focused on presenting and enhancing dialog on the improvements in the technology and fuels for household energy use.
These diverse slew of initiatives across 50 odd countries broadly classified as the ‘Cooking Stoves intervention’ primarily aim to improve the ‘Indoor Clean Air’ quality.
The participants at the workshop included representatives from funders (UN Foundation, Lemelson Foundation), Stove designers such as Prakti Design, One Earth Design and Bio Light Stoves, Sierra Club, market accelerators including cKinetics, Ashden Awards and PCIA (a global initiative by the EPA). Various case studies and field experiences shared reflected the ground experiences in geographies as diverse as Africa, South Asia and the Far East.
Hearing the views and interest angles of various participant organizations and stakeholders in this area, I was fascinated by the potential and spectrum of the impact being addressed by the ‘cooking stove’ interventions.
1. Dependence on polluting solid fuels to meet basic energy needs represents one of the biggest threats to women and children’s health.
o Per the WHO, there are 1.6 mn premature deaths annually due to indoor smoke from solid fuel use; (4th highest human killer in the world – 3 deaths every minute, mostly women and children under 5!)
o Almost 3 bn kgs of wood is consumed as household fuel every year
o Approximately 2.4 billion people―about two-thirds of the developing world―cook over biomass-fueled fires. Common biomass fuels include wood, charcoal, dung and crop residues. While this may go down over time, the total numbers are expected to rise by as many as 200 million people over the next 25 years. Not only is this environmentally unsustainable at the global level, but the health ramifications are devastating at the community and family levels.
2. Clear linkage to larger global warming and Climate Change problem
o About one-third of human-caused black carbon emissions in the world are from poor household combustion (resulting from cooking with wood, crop waste or cow dung).
o In the Indian context, this is directly resulting in an accelerated melting of glaciers in the Himalayan region thus: (a) Impacting the tourism and livelihood potential of the communities in places such as Kashmir and Nepal by darkening ice and snow; (b) Presenting elevated risks of floods and temperature changes in the Gangetic plains.
o Black Carbon is 1000 times potentially more impactful than CO2.
3. Given the size of activity, it is clear we can’t have a successful black carbon program without considering combustion in households.
4. Suggested solutions focused on better ventilation for existing cooking devices, improvement in the combustion technologies in current stoves and the use of cleaner-burning fuels including options in Biogas, Solar and Ethanol.
5. Practitioners acknowledged that high costs and limited access have greatly impacted the uptake of cleaner-burning fuels. In this context, some of the solar led interventions seemed feasible.
(Source Scripps Oceanography News: The polluting effects of cooking using biomass like wood or cow dung in south Asia are illustrated through a measurement of aerosol optical depth, a way of measuring the quantity of pollutants in the air by the relative ability of light to penetrate through them. The upper image is a representation showing reconstructed levels of pollution from 2004 and 2005. The bottom image is a representation with the effects of biofuel cooking removed.)
What is particularly interesting and relevant is that indoor smoke pollution disproportionately affects people living in regions that are conducive to solar cooking: India, China and sub-Saharan African, where the highest proportion of people cook with biomass fuels. In this context, it is interesting to note that one of the Key UN Millennium Project goals is to “Enable the use of modern fuels for 50% of those who at present use traditional biomass for cooking by 2015.”
Clearly this is an enormous challenge, perhaps as large as the whole issue of global warming and climate change. However there is a major difference: unlike the generic carbon emission reduction framework which have typically been perceived as limiting growth objectives of nations, this goal presents itself as an area where a ‘non-intrusive’ global collaborative framework can be easily shaped up.
Most apparent is the confluence of the Black Carbon activity and the Food Security issue - this is something that will appeal to the domestic audiences in both the North and the South.
The Cooking Stove led interventions represent a unique ‘grass-roots’ confluence of issues such as:
- Climate Change: On the Black Carbon front, it is a significant issue and potentially one of the few which generate immediate climate benefits due to its short atmospheric lifetime (days to weeks) as compared to organic CO2 emissions.
- Food security, Health and Energy for Cooking purposes
- Deforestation and Desertification
- Gender security in refugee camps, etc.
There are already slew of cooperative measures underway to address this in a cohesive collaborative manner. EPA led PCIA (Partnership for Clean Indoor Air) is a clear example of leadership required to establish a global order required to address this. In India alone, PICA has 20+ partner organizations.
However the opportunity is much larger and perhaps offers the bulwark on which the global climate change framework itself can be shaped. Given the addressable market size and the multiple dimensions associated with the problem per se, it also offers a unique opportunity for market based solutions to lead the way.
Several of these cooking stove interventions present unique project opportunities to create voluntary carbon offset projects which could be supported by the developed world. On the programmatic construct, they present a mass-scale opportunity for bundled sub-regional projects.
Clearly working in a cohesive programmatic fashion will ensure that the funding required is managed through an aggregation of sources including climate bill proceeds and offsets.
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