Qualitative Findings and Implications for Scaling Up an Improved Cookstove Project in Rural Kenya

May 7, 2012 · 0 comments

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2012, 9, 1566-1580; doi:10.3390/ijerph9051566

“It Is Good for My Family’s Health and Cooks Food in a Way That My Heart Loves”: Qualitative Findings and Implications for Scaling Up an Improved Cookstove Project in Rural Kenya

Bobbie Person, et al.

The use of indoor, three-stone fire pits in resource–poor countries is a substantial burden on human health and the environment. We conducted a pilot intervention promoting the purchase and use of an improved cookstove in rural Kenya. The goals of this qualitative inquiry were to understand the motivation to purchase and use; perceived benefits and challenges of cookstove use; and the most influential promotion activities for scaling up future cookstove promotion. Purposive sampling was used to recruit 10 cookstove promoters and 30 cookstove purchasers in the Luo community.

Qualitative semi-structured interviews were transcribed and a thematic analysis conducted. Women reported the need for less firewood, fuel cost savings, reduced smoke, improved cooking efficiency, reduced eye irritation, lung congestion and coughing as major benefits of the cookstove. Cost appeared to be a barrier to wider adoption. The most persuasive promotion strategies were interpersonal communication through social networks and cooking demonstrations. Despite this cost barrier, many women still considered the improved cookstove to be a great asset within their household. This inquiry provided important guidance for future cookstove implementation projects.

Reduced lung function due to biomass smoke exposure in young adults in rural Nepal

May 4, 2012 · 0 comments

European Respiratory Journal, May 3, 2012

Reduced lung function due to biomass smoke exposure in young adults in rural Nepal

Om P Kurmi, et al.

This study aimed to assess the effects of biomass smoke exposure on lung function in a Nepalese population addressing some of these methodological issues from previous studies.

We carried out a cross-sectional study of adults in a population exposed to biomass smoke and a non-exposed population in Nepal. Questionnaire and lung function data were acquired along with direct measures of indoor and outdoor air quality.

Ventilatory function (FEV1, FVC, FEF25–75) was significantly reduced in the population using biomass across all age groups compared to the non-biomass using population, even in the youngest (16–25) age group [mean FEV1 (95% CI) 2.65 (2.57–2.73) vs. 2.83 (2.74–2.91), p=0.004]. Airflow obstruction was twice as common among biomass users compared to liquefied petroleum gas users (8.1% vs. 3.6%, p<0.001) with similar patterns for males (7.4% vs. 3.3%, p=0.022) and females (10.8% vs. 3.8%, p<0.001) based on lower limit of normal. Smoking was a major risk factor for airflow obstruction but biomass exposure added to the risk.

Exposure to biomass smoke is associated with deficits in lung function, an effect which can be detected as early as late teenage years. Biomass smoke and cigarette smoke have additive adverse effects on airflow obstruction in this setting.

China Joins the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

May 4, 2012 · 0 comments

China Joins the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

US State Dept Media Note, May 3, 2012

Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo announced that China has joined the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves during a tour of a clean cookstove exhibit with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Beijing today. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership that seeks to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. By joining the Alliance, China will help meet the Alliance’s goal to ensure 100 million homes adopt clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which was launched by Secretary Clinton in 2010, represents the first time that world leaders have come together to develop and implement a sustainable strategy to bring clean and efficient cooking solutions to families across the globe.

In China, approximately 80 percent of households rely on solid fuels like wood or dung to meet their energy needs. According to World Health Organization estimates, this exposure accounts for more than 540,000 premature deaths in China each year, and significant chronic and acute illnesses. By joining the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, China is taking an important step towards reducing the enormous health, gender, economic and environmental risks associated with inefficient and polluting cookstoves both in China and in developing markets around the world.

China’s domestic cookstove industry is one of the world’s largest with over 100 manufacturers. As part of the Alliance, China will support efforts to establish global performance standards for cookstoves and work with domestic manufacturers to meet these standards. China will consider multiple options for work under the Alliance, including support for research and development to accelerate advancements around technology, agriculture and fuels, health and climate, the development of an international stoves research center, efforts to adapt high-performing domestic stoves for global markets, and efforts to bring clean cooking solutions to homes in China.

To date, more than 300 public and private partners and 35 countries have joined the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves by making commitments to overcome market barriers and achieve large-scale production, deployment, and adoption of clean stoves and fuels in the developing world.

Cheaper fuel and higher health costs among the poor in rural Nepal.

May 3, 2012 · 0 comments

Ambio. 2012 May;41(3):271-83.

Cheaper fuel and higher health costs among the poor in rural Nepal.

Pant KP. Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Vidhya Lane, Devnagar, Ichangu-6, Kathmandu, Nepal, kppant@yahoo.com.

Biomass fuels are used by the majority of resource poor households in low-income countries. Though biomass fuels, such as dung-briquette and firewood are apparently cheaper than the modern fuels indoor pollution from burning biomass fuels incurs high health costs. But, the health costs of these conventional fuels, mostly being indirect, are poorly understood.

To address this gap, this study develops probit regression models using survey data generated through interviews from households using either dung-briquette or biogas as the primary source of fuel for cooking. The study investigates factors affecting the use of dung-briquette, assesses its impact on human health, and estimates the associated household health costs.

Analysis suggests significant effects of dung-briquette on asthma and eye diseases. Despite of the perception of it being a cheap fuel, the annual health cost per household due to burning dung-briquette (US$ 16.94) is 61.3% higher than the annual cost of biogas (US$ 10.38), an alternative cleaner fuel for rural households.

For reducing the use of dung-briquette and its indirect health costs, the study recommends three interventions: (1) educate women and aboriginal people, in particular, and make them aware of the benefits of switching to biogas; (2) facilitate tree planting in communal as well as private lands; and (3) create rural employment and income generation opportunities.

Characterizing biofuel combustion with Patterns of Real-Time Emission Data (PaRTED)

May 3, 2012 · 0 comments

Environ Sci Technol. 2012 Apr 25.

Characterizing biofuel combustion with Patterns of Real-Time Emission Data (PaRTED).

Chen Y, Roden CA, Bond TC.

Emission properties and quantities from combustion sources can vary significantly during operation, and this characteristic variability is hidden in the traditional presentation of emission test averages. As a complement to the emission test averages, we introduce the notion of statistical pattern analysis to characterize temporal fluctuations in emissions, using cluster analysis and frequency plots.

We demonstrate this approach by comparing emissions from traditional and improved wood-burning cookstoves under in-field conditions, and also to contrast laboratory and in-field cookstove performance. Compared with traditional cookstoves, improved cookstoves eliminate emissions that occur at low combustion efficiency.

For cookstoves where the only improvement is an insulated combustion chamber, this change results in emission of more light-absorbing (black) particles. When a chimney is added, the stoves produce more black particles but also have reduced emission factors.

Laboratory tests give different results than in-field tests, because they fail to reproduce a significant fraction of low-efficiency events, spikes in particulate matter (PM) emissions, and less-absorbing particles. These conditions should be isolated and replicated in future laboratory testing protocols to ensure that stove designs are relevant to in-use operation.

Gasifier stove and other renewable fuel technologies – Video

May 2, 2012 · 0 comments

Berkeley-based Potential Energy announces $1.5 million grant from United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

May 1, 2012 · 0 comments

BERKELEY, Calif., May 1, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Berkeley-based nonprofit Potential Energy (formerly the Darfur Stoves Project), is proud to announce it has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Development Innovation Ventures (DIV). This grant, which will fund the distribution of clean cookstoves in Darfur and Ethiopia, comes on the heels of the organization’s recent name change to Potential Energy and reflects the move to expand its activities beyond Darfur.

Founded in 2007, Potential Energy, (http://www.potentialenergy.org), works with local enterprises in poverty-stricken countries to manufacture and distribute household technologies, such as clean cookstoves, that solve critical life challenges. In partnership with humanitarian organizations such as Oxfam America, Potential Energy has already distributed more than 20,000 stoves in Darfur. The stoves decrease women’s exposure to violence while collecting firewood, as well as their need to trade food rations for fuel. In the past year, the organization has doubled the impact of its efforts – almost half of all stoves distributed in Darfurwere distributed in 2011 alone, with another 15,000 planned for 2012.

In the long term, Potential Energy plans to develop a portfolio of clean technologies for the world’s poorest people using the same user-centered design and partnership approach that has led to the enormous success of its Darfur Stoves Project.

The $1.5 million, three-year grant from USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures supports Potential Energy‘s transition to a more sustainable social enterprise approach through innovative marketing and distribution channels and capacity building for local organizations. Potential Energy plans to collaborate with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies for research and development, and will engage an independent group to assess the project’s impact and relative effectiveness of different marketing strategies.

For more information, please contact Andree Sosler at andree@potentialenergy.org or at (510) 848-8486. You can also learn more on the organization’s newly launched website: www.potentialenergy.org.

Founded in 2007, Potential Energy is a nonprofit organization that adapts and scales technologies to improve lives in developing countries. Building on the success of its flagship initiative, the Darfur Stoves Project, which has disseminated more than 20,000 clean cookstoves to date, the organization seeks to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women and protect the environment.

 

WASHplus Weekly – Focus on Cookstove Adoption

April 27, 2012 · 0 comments

Issue 53 April 27, 2012 | Focus on Cookstove Adoption

This WASHplus Weekly contains 2011 and 2011 reports and videos about factors that affect the adoption of cookstoves. Several studies show that income and education are positively associated with adoption in most cases. However, potentially important factors such as credit, supply-chain strengthening, and social marketing have been ignored. The resources below include global reviews about cookstove adoption and country reports from Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Mozambique, Pakistan, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda. Videos from Columbia and Stanford universities discuss social and other factors that influenced cookstove adoption in Bangladesh and India.

As many of you already know, there is also a debate currently underway that includes posts on Washington Post and New York Times blogs and elsewhere about a Brian Palmer editorial on a study in India entitled Up in Smoke and Palmer’s conclusion that “we’re not yet ready to distribute clean stoves worldwide.” We’ve posted a link to the editorial and will also be tracking responses to this editorial on the WASHplus Indoor Air Pollution Updates.

Please let WASHplus know at any time if you have resources to share for future issues of WASHplus Weekly or if you have suggestions for future topics. An archive of past Weekly issues is available on the WASHplus website.

Debate over the Up in Smoke Study

April 26, 2012 · 1 comment

There is a current debate over a study entitled Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves by Rema Hanna of Harvard University and others. 

From the report summary: “We provide new evidence from a randomized control trial conducted in rural Orissa, India of the benefits of a commonly used improved stove that had been shown to reduce indoor air pollution and require less fuel in laboratory tests. We find no evidence of improvements in lung functioning or health and there is no change in fuel consumption (and presumably greenhouse gas emissions). The difference between the laboratory and this study’s field findings appears to result from households’ revealed low valuation of the stoves.”

Below are links to editorials and articles that discuss the Up in Smoke study and we welcome your comments on this as well.

  • An April 16, 2012 editorial by Brian Palmer in the Washington Post summarized the article and concludes that”we’re not yet ready to distribute clean stoves worldwide” and quotes one of the study’s co-authors that “this isn’t an argument against spending money; it’s an argument against spending money unwisely.”
  • Also, an April 23, 2012 New York Times blog post, The Cookstove Conumdrum by Vivek Dehejia, an economics professor at Carleton University, cites the Palmer editorial.

In response to the above articles:

  • Kirk Smith, of the University of California, Berkeley submitted a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post. Dr. Smith states, ” The so-called “improved” stove in the Indian study reported on by Brian Palmer (“Too many cookstoves spoil the effort to cut indoor air pollution” April 17) was not clean in any important way and so of course did not improve health. It was a simple local stove that did not change combustion to reduce smoke.”
  • Radha Muthiah, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, issued the following statement, Time is Right, Time is Now for Clean Cookstoves. “The Alliance’s mission is to foster sustainable markets for technologies that people want, can afford, and will ultimately use. It is unfortunate that a misleading headline and a narrowly focused article have the potential to create the wrong impression and cause a setback to a sector poised to deliver lasting, beneficial, innovative change to one of the oldest and most intimate of human traditions: cooking a meal for oneself and one’s family.”

Regional Cookstove Testing Centers – PCIA Bulletin, April 2012

April 25, 2012 · 0 comments

PCIA Bulletin Issue 30 – Regional Cookstove Testing Centers

This milestone 30th issue focuses on Regional Cookstove Testing Centers in North America, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Ten PCIA Partners who run these testing centers share their thousands of hours of testing expertise, including details about their lab, types of stoves tested, protocols used, lessons learned and what they have planned for 2012! Throughout this issue you’ll also find links to testing resources available on the PCIA website and exciting new field testing opportunities for PCIA Partners.

Contents

Feature Articles – Regional Stove Testing Centers
USEPA
Aprovecho Research Center
Colorado State University
CREEC
SeTAR
GERES Cambodia
China Agricultural University
GIZ Bolivia
Zamorano University
SENCICO
Spotlight on Durability Testing
USEPA 3rd Round of Stove Testing
Global Alliance Commitment to Testing
Recent Partner Activity
Upcoming Events and Announcements
Fact box on Stove Testing Statistics

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →