Preface - GIZ HERA Cooking Energy Compendium

Cooking Energy Compendium

Manual for Programs and Projects to Implement Cooking Energy Interventions.

Why this Compendium?

Until recently, discussions on energy issues in developing countries often lacked a component addressing household energy for cooking despite it being a major energy consumer. In places where electricity, gas, or other fuels are not widely available and affordable, traditional cooking patterns still prevail. Biomass, such as firewood, charcoal and animal residues, may be the only accessible fuel in these places, and efforts must be made to ensure that such fuels can be used safely and sustainably. This crucial point is now receiving greater attention as the world recognises the major environmental impacts of biomass cooking in terms of deforestation, erosion, and climate change. The negative health impacts of smoke from open fires, especially on women and children, are now identified as a major issue among the international health community.

For those who have worked in this field, all these impacts are not new. For about 20–30 years, people have been engaged in projects to introduce energy saving technologies for cooking, although with varying levels of success. Many of these technologies, techniques and approaches were locally developed, but widespread dissemination has not been achieved to date. Often, projects were disseminated at local village level because project staff did not have the skills or resources to disseminate improved technologies at regional or national level. In the very recent past, the need to improve the lives of the poor through wider dissemination of household energy technologies has been acknowledged by both donors and implementers.

The poverty-oriented basic energy services programme of GIZ (HERA) has compiled this compendium in order to support this need for large-scale dissemination, sharing the knowledge GIZ has gained from many projects supporting dissemination of energy efficient technologies for cooking and baking. Although there is already a lot of literature and information in books, within organisations and on web pages, this publication addresses the need for a compendium drawing together these broader issues.

Based on worldwide experience, the following chapters give an overview of topics related to cooking energy with special focus on local production of technologies, monitoring, technologies, market introduction, wood energy and policy action. We hope that it will be helpful for those who are engaged in cooking energy projects.

Last but not least, we hope to learn from your feedback, contributions, and experience, all of which are greatly appreciated. We hope that this compendium will be a ‘living’ document whose information, based on your experience, will continue to grow.

How to Use this Compendium

This is not a classical book, but rather a work that will be distributed via CD-ROM and the Internet, and whose chapters need not be read consecutively. Each chapter stands alone and gives an overview of the relevant topic. As a result, some overlap with other chapters may occur. However, we have tried to minimize this problem by offering cross-references/links to other chapters wherever possible. Additional examples and links to literature, materials and web pages are given within the text, allowing the reader a more dynamic and personal use of the information.

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