The U.S. Commitment to Cookstoves in Africa

June 16, 2011 · 0 comments

June 16, 2011 – In September 2010, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton announced the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, a public-private partnership led by the United Nations Foundation to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat climate change by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. The Alliance’s 100 by 20 goal calls for 100 million homes to adopt clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020.

On the heels of Secretary Clinton’s visit to Africa this week, seven African nations have joined the Alliance, including Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Rwanda, and Tanzania as well as the Nigerian Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which includes four Nigerian federal ministries.

The Problem: Nearly half of the world’s population – about 3 billion people – cooks their food each day on polluting, inefficient stoves. Exposure to smoke from traditional cookstoves and open fires is the fifth worst health risk factor in poor countries and leads to nearly 2 million premature deaths of mostly women and young children each year (more than twice the mortality from malaria).

More than 70% of Africans burn solid fuels such as wood, charcoal or crop residues for their home cooking needs. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year more than one quarter of the worldwide deaths associated with exposure to cookstove smoke occur in Africa – that equates to more than 550,000 deaths in Africa attributable to cookstoves. Also according to WHO, out of the 23 countries in the world where cookstoves represent more than 4 percent of the national burden of disease*, 21 are in Africa.

A Global Alliance: The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Cleancookstoves.org) is working with public, private, and non-profit partners to help overcome market barriers and achieve large-scale production, deployment, and use of clean stoves and fuels in the developing world. The Alliance comprises a rapidly growing list of nearly 100 public, private, philanthropic, NGO, academic, and other partners, including the governments of Norway, Denmark, El Salvador, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Peru, and the United Kingdom. The Ethiopian Government has an ambitious national effort to address the risks associated with cookstoves, and many leading partners of this sector are active in Ethiopia, including: UNHCR, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), Project Gaia, and Bosch-Siemens. World Vision is piloting other improved stoves in Ethiopia.

U.S. Government Commitment: The United States Government has committed more than $50 million to the Alliance over five years. Participating U.S. agencies include: The State Department, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services (National Institutes of Health; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The U.S. Government is mobilizing financial resources, providing top-level U.S. experts, and leveraging research and development tools to help the Alliance achieve its 100 by 20 target. Other U.S. agencies also are considering investments in this sector.

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A Low-Impact Stove for Rwanda

June 13, 2011 · 1 comment

Last year, Eric Reynolds, the co-founder of the outdoor sports gear company Marmot, contacted me with an aggressive business plan for rolling out fuel-efficient, low-pollution cookstoves across Rwanda. Having seen dozens of entrepreneurial projects in Rwanda start with a big bang and then founder for lack of momentum and commitment, I initially brushed off his enthusiasm. I gently explained that he would have to move to Rwanda if he was to get anything done, and he explained that this was exactly his plan.

Eric Reynolds, co-founder of the outdoor sports gear company Marmot, with the cookstove he created for use in Rwanda.

When Eric rolled into town a few months later and announced that he had decided to, in his words, “spend life here,” I was pleasantly surprised.

Since then, Reynolds has created a for-profit “social business” called “Inyenyeri – A Rwandan Social Benefit Company,” which is the Kinyarwanda word for star and the engine for his extraordinarily ambitious plan to expand clean cookstove use and much more.

Cookstove initiatives are not new to Africa, and I know a bit about them from one of my early projects that aimed to commercialize a rocket stove design made from clay. That design burned wood – about two-thirds less wood than a traditional three-stone fire – and cut emissions by about 70%. It was cutting edge, but never quite caught on: there were challenges in consistent manufacturing, in cultivating sufficient demand, and in addressing the fact that it was hard to put larger pots on the device.

Reynolds’s business plan is based on WorldStove International’s 5-Step Program, which was designed by inventor Nat Mulcahy and establishes locally run and owned stove hubs in developing nations. The 5-Step Program has three core objectives: improving the health of stove users, improving environmental conditions, and creating local jobs – all with a technology that is nothing short of revolutionary: The LuciaStove has a clean blue gas flame, emits virtually zero harmful emissions, and produces biocharresidue, a fine-grained charcoal substance made entirely of carbon that can be used as an organic fertilizer to increase crop yields and food security.

What’s more, the system allegedly produces a carbon-negative form of energy, which (according to Reynolds’s calculations) means that if 40% of the Rwandan population were to use LuciaStoves, the country could become the first carbon-negative economy in the world.

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Impact of Reduced Maternal Exposures to Woodsmoke

June 13, 2011 · 0 comments

Environ Health Perspect. 2011 Jun 7.

Impact of Reduced Maternal Exposures to Woodsmoke from an Introduced Chimney Stove on Newborn Birth Weight in Rural Guatemala.

Thompson LM, Bruce N, Eskenazi B, Díaz A, Pope D, Smith KR.

Background: There is a growing body of evidence reporting a relationship between household indoor air pollution from cooking fires and adverse neonatal outcomes, such as low birth weight (LBW) in resource-poor countries. We examined the effect of reduced woodsmoke exposure in pregnancy on LBW of Guatemalan infants in RESPIRE (Randomized Exposure Study of Pollution Indoors and Respiratory Effects).

Methods: Pregnant women (n=266) received either a chimney stove (intervention) or continued to cook over an open fire (control). Between October 2002 and December 2004 we weighed 174 eligible infants (69 to mothers who used a chimney stove and 105 to mothers who used an open fire during pregnancy) within 48 hours of birth. Multivariate linear regression and adjusted odds ratios were used to estimate differences in birth weight and LBW (

Results: Pregnant women using chimney stoves had a 39% reduction in mean exposure to carbon monoxide compared to open fire users. LBW prevalence was high at 22.4%. On average infants born to mothers who used a stove weighed 89 g more (95% CI, -27 to 204) than infants whose mothers used open fires after adjusting for maternal height, diastolic blood pressure, gravidity, and season of birth. The adjusted odds ratio for LBW was 0.74 (95% CI, 0.33-1.66) among infants of stove users compared to open fire users. Average birth weight was 296 grams higher (95% CI, 109 to 482) in infants born during the cold season (after harvest) than in other infants; this unanticipated finding may reflect the role of maternal nutrition on birth weight in an impoverished region.

Conclusions: A chimney stove reduced woodsmoke exposures and was associated with reduced LBW occurrence. Although not statistically significant, the estimated effect was consistent with previous studies.

World Bank – Household Cookstoves, Environment, Health, and Climate Change

June 3, 2011 · 0 comments

Household Cookstoves, Environment, Health, and Climate Change, 2011. World Bank.

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Developing and deploying the new generation of cookstoves at scale would cover a broad agenda, requiring cooperation among a range of diverse stakeholders on energy access. There is scope to support the technical development and innovation of all stove types under the umbrella of providing clean and affordable household energy to the poor. It would be crucial to have widely accepted standards and testing protocols, as well as active M&E protocols for both the advanced biomass and effective improved cookstoves. The required financial engineering would need to balance loans and grants, taking both cost and affordability into consideration; and the role of climate-finance instruments would need to be further explored.

Scaling up deployment would require learning from other successful programs, including SHSs and water and sanitation interventions, and awareness raising and publicity, along with multiple complementary partnerships among government, the private sector, development partners, and nongovernmental organizations so that all stakeholders perform to their comparative advantage.

Today there is a renewed momentum to promote advanced biomass cookstoves that are affordable and burn fuel cleanly and efficiently. The building blocks appear to be falling into place: advanced biomass cookstoves backed by private-sector interest, new financing models and sources, and a coalition of the willing across stakeholder groups (e.g., the recently formed United Nations Foundation–led GACC, which the World Bank has joined). A point of entry for development institutions like the World Bank is the International Development Association (IDA) 16 consensus on mainstreaming gender and climate change in development assistance.

Furthermore, the provision of clean and affordable household energy is an integral part of scaling up energy access for the poor. The social and economic consequences of reducing the hours women spend collecting biomass fuel, improving their health, and freeing up their time for more beneficial activities might well result in raising the living standards of an entire generation of children and households. Finally, at the global and regional levels, advanced cookstoves could contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gases and other climate forcers attributed to biomass burning.

Environmentalists seek to set research agenda on indoor air pollution

May 25, 2011 · 0 comments

Environmentalists seek to set research agenda on indoor air pollution

Source – BMJ 2011; 342:d3062

Nearly half the world’s people use open fires and traditional biomass cooking stoves that expose them to indoor air pollution and cause an estimated 1.9 million premature deaths a year. Women and children are particularly affected.

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves seeks to reduce this exposure through a switch to cleaner, more efficient alternatives. It is promoting the ambitious goal of converting 100 million homes by the year 2020.

A three day meeting of health advocates and biomedical researchers has proved to be the catalyst for setting a research agenda on indoor air pollution in developing countries. The US National Institutes of Health organised the conference, held near Washington, DC, on 9-11 May.

Themes reported by the conference’s working groups included the need to create a common database to eliminate duplication of research and standardisation of terms and measures to enable comparisons and aggregation of research findings.

The researchers seek to build on lessons and methods developed in tobacco research, identifying similarities and differences between tobacco toxins and the various components of indoor air pollution. It will be crucial to establish valid dose-response curves to exposure and to understand the epigenetics of exposure during each stage of human development.

Kirk Smith, an environmental scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the RESPIRE study in India is documenting the effect on low birth weight babies of substituting cleaner cook stoves. “If we can show even half the observational [effect], the economic value of reduced neonatal care would justify the cost of the [cook stove] programme.”

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A modeling approach to risk assessment for women chronically exposed to carbon monoxide

May 25, 2011 · 0 comments

J Appl Physiol. 2011 May 19.

A mathematical modeling approach to risk assessment for normal and anemic women chronically exposed to carbon monoxide from biomass-fueled cookstoves.

Bruce EN, Bruce MC, Erupaka-Chada K. University of Kentucky.

Chronic exposure to carbon monoxide (CO) from biomass-fueled cookstoves may pose a significant health risk for women who use these stoves, especially for those with underlying clinical conditions that impair tissue oxygenation, e.g., anemia and coronary artery disease. CO concentrations measured in the vicinity of these cookstoves often exceed World Health Organization (WHO) indoor air guidelines for an 8-hr average (9 ppm) and a 1-hr maximum (26 ppm). Carboxyhemoglobin levels, reported infrequently because they are difficult to obtain, often exceed the WHO threshold of 2.5%.

Despite this evidence, specific adverse effects have not yet been linked with chronic CO exposures in these women. Furthermore, anemia, which is prevalent in populations that use biomass fuels, could exacerbate the adverse effects of chronic CO exposure. Because of the difficulties inherent in conducting prospective studies to address this issue, we used a mathematical model to calculate the effects of reported CO levels and exercise on carboxyhemoglobin for women living in: a) Guatemalan villages at altitudes of 4429-4593 feet, and b) coastal villages in Pakistan.

In addition, we used the model to calculate the effects of CO exposures in women with moderate to severe anemia on specific physiological parameters carboxyhemoglobin, carboxymyoglobin, cardiac output, and tissue PO2’s) at exercise levels that represented the activities in which these women would be engaged. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of using a mathematical model to predict the physiologic responses to CO and also demonstrate that hemoglobin concentration is a critically-important determinant of CO toxicity in these women.

Adoption and sustained use of improved cookstoves

May 20, 2011 · 0 comments

Energy Policy (2011), doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2011.03.028

Adoption and sustained use of improved cookstoves

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Ilse Ruiz-Mercado, Omar Masera, Hilda Zamora, Kirk R. Smith

The adoption and sustained use of improved cookstoves are critical performance parameters of the cooking system that must be monitored just like the rest of the stove technical requirements to ensure the sustainability of their benefits. No stove program can achieve its goals unless people initially accept the stoves and continue using them on a long-term basis. When a new stove is brought into a household, commonly a stacking of stoves and fuels takes place with each device being used for the cooking practices where it fits best.

Therefore, to better understand the adoption process and assess the impacts of introducing a new stove it is necessary to examine the relative advantages of each device in terms of each of the main cooking practices and available fuels. An emerging generation of sensor based tools is making possible continuous and objective monitoring of the stove adoption process (from acceptance to sustained use or disadoption), and has enabled its scalability. Such monitoring is also needed for transparent verification in carbon projects and for improved dissemination by strategically targeting the users with the highest adoption potential and the substitution of cooking practices with the highest indoor air pollution or greenhouse gas contributions.

Household Energy Solutions in Developing Countries

May 20, 2011 · 0 comments

Encyclopedia of Environmental Health, v 3, pp. 62-75 Burlington: Elsevier, 2011.

Household Energy Solutions in Developing Countries

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Bruce NG, Rehfuess EA and Smith KR

Poverty is a key underlying issue in any consideration of household energy solution for developing countries. However, since improving access tocleaner and more efficient household energy will make direct contributions to both health improvement and poverty reduction, it is important not to rely on economic growth and other poverty reduction measures as the primary means of improving energy choices for poor households. This is similar to household interventions for clean water and sanitation, which serve to assist poor families’ health and their prospects for improving their condition in other ways. This article considers the range of interventions and policies available to achieve this transition, and reviews their effectiveness and efficiency, along with experience from projects and programs over the past 30 years.

Solid Fuel Use: Health Effect

May 20, 2011 · 0 comments

Encyclopedia of Environmental Health, v 5, pp. 150-161. Burlington: Elsevier, 2011.

Solid Fuel Use: Health Effect.

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Rehfuess EA, Bruce NG and Smith KR.

This article presents an overview of global and reional household energy practices, considers the composition of biomass smoke and coal smoke as well as associated pollutant concentrations and personal exposure, and reviews the evidence linking indoor air pollution to a variety of health outcomes. Based on the assessment of the burden of disease attributable to indoor air pollution from solid fuel use, it discusses the public health significance of this environmental health risk and its broader consequences for economic development and environmental sustainability in developing countries.

WHO – Household Air Pollution Statistics

May 20, 2011 · 0 comments

WHO’s Global Health Observatory provides useful maps and charts on:

  • Exposure to household air pollution, More than half of the world’s population rely on solid fuels (wood, coal, dung) for cooking.
  • Mortality and burden of disease, In 2004, indoor air pollution was responsible for 2 million deaths, and 2.7% of the global burden of disease.

Link: http://www.who.int/gho/phe/indoor_air_pollution/en/index.html

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