Facts on Cooking Energy

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Facts on Cooking Energy

• Every person needs food to sustain their lives. Most food needs to be cooked and most people cook 2-3 times per day, EVERY day.
• Worldwide, 2.7 billion people use biomass fuels for cooking. These fuels include firewood, charcoal, dung, and agricultural residues.
• Cooking energy accounts for about 90% of all household energy consumption in developing countries.
• Frequently, biomass fuels are the only available energy source, especially in rural areas. In most Sub-Saharan countries, more than 80% of the population depend on biomass fuels for their daily cooking.
• Biomass fuels are mainly burned on inefficient open fires and traditional stoves.
• Despite massive efforts aimed at substitution and electrification, the number of people relying on biomass energy is still increasing. It is estimated that by 2030, more than 2.8 billion people will cook with biomass.
• Despite the important role of biomass for cooking, it is considered 'dirty' and 'backward' and seldom associated with 'modern energy'. Yet, biomass is here to stay.

Disadvantages of Biomass

• In many cases, the demand for biomass fuels far outweighs sustainable supply. This can contribute to deforestation, land degradation and desertification.
• Unclean burning leads to emissions.
• Dwindling resources lead to an additional workload for women and children as they have to spend more time searching for firewood, and the fuel that they find is often of a lower grade and thus burns with more smoke and less heat.
• Every year, the smoke from open fires and traditional stoves - leading to indoor air pollution - kills 1.5 million people. Thus, every 20 seconds, a woman or child is dying due to inefficient use of biomass fuel.
• Fuelwood is often collected on a daily basis and has no time to dry before use. This makes the use less efficient as some heat is wasted to drive the moisture out of the wood. Moist fuel results in more smoke.

Advantages of Biomass

• Biomass is a renewable source of energy - if produced in a sustainable manner. Efficient planting guarantees that supply meets demand.
• In most regions of the world, people use wood or some form of biomass fuel. With the right stove, the majority of these fuels can be burned without further processing.
• Usually biomass fuels are easily accessible. Collecting firewood seems to be cheaper than alternative fuels such as gas, paraffin, and electricity. Thus, biomass fuels are more affordable to the poor.
• Biomass is within reach of users. Users don't depend on providers or utitilities or imports like fossil fuels.
• Fuel preparation behaviour is often more important in reducing emissions than the technology itself.

Technologies for an Efficient Use of Biomass

• Technologies and techniques for sustainable production and efficient use of biomass energy are available. Further scaling up of these techniques and technologies is needed.
• Biomass fuels will remain the most important source of energy for the next decades. The best way to burn them efficiently and sustainably is the use of clean-burning and efficient stoves.
• A well-designed improved household stove, which is properly used, can save up to 60% of fuel compared to the traditional three-stone fire.
• Well-designed energy-efficient stoves emit very little smoke, provided that improved efficiency is due in part to improved combustion. A large number of stoves are efficient because of the way heat is directed at the pot (heat transfer efficiency), rather than by improved combustion (combustion efficiency). It is important to ensure that both combustion efficiency and heat transfer efficiency are improved when designing a stove.
• Improved technologies range from artisanal or factory-produced clay and metal stoves to solar cookers, heat retaining cookers, and stoves using green fuels such as plant oil, ethanol, or biogas.

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Cooking Energy and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) seek to halve poverty by 2015. The UN Millennium Declaration  was adopted by the General Assembly in September 2000

-> UN Millennium Development Goals 

Although none of the eight Millennium Development Goals specifically address cooking energy, its importance was acknowledged in later documents as follows:
‘Improved energy services – including modern cooking fuels – are necessary for meeting almost all the Goals… The UN Millennium Project proposes that countries adopt the following specific target … by 2015: Reduce the number of people without effective access to modern cooking fuels by 50 percent and make improved cookstoves widely available.’

-> Millenium Project, The Full Report - A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millenium Develoment Goals

To achieve this goal, an additional 500 000 people have to get access to improved cooking energy services every day. The sustainable and clean use of biomass energy for cooking contributes directly to achieving all Millennium Development Goals (see table below). It is thus of high political and social relevance to the development process.

During the UN High Level Plenary Meeting in September 2010, a follow-up resolution to the outcome of the Millennium Summit was adopted. In this additional document, several issues relating to energy access, security, clean and renewable energy, etc. are set forth, emphazising the importance of energy for sustainable development. (See §46, 373, §77f, §77k, §68u for energy related aspects of the MDGs.)

Impact of improved cooking energy provision on the MDGs
Millennium Development Goal		Effect of efficient cooking energy provision	Impacts of efficient cooking energy	Further reading
1	Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty	Production and commercialisation of efficient stoves Reduced fuel demand	Jobs and small business creation, income generation Money savings Preparation of more nutritious food (e.g. beans) more likely, since 95% of staple food must be cooked
2	Achieve universal primary education	Children spend less time collecting wood Less fuelwood costs for school feeding programmes Less respiratory infections & burns	Children have more time to go to school More children attending school get a warm meal Less time off from school through illness	Fact Sheet Education and Household Energy
3	Promote gender equality and empower women	Training women in commercialisation and production of stoves Time spent gathering firewood and cooking is reduced Improved kitchen conditions for the woman	Women gain self-confidence and improve their status in the community by becoming entrepreneurs Women have more time to dedicate to educational, economic and leisure activities Women’s status within the family unit is improved by better working conditions	Gender, Poverty and Cooking Energy within Local and Global Contexts   Factsheet: Gender Equality and Infrastructure
4,5,6	Reduce child mortality, improve maternal health & combat diseases	Less emissions of particulate matter (PM) and carbon monoxide (CO) Fire is shielded	Reduced risk of respiratory diseases and eye infections, especially in women, and in children under five years Less burns	WHO (2006): Fuel for Life - Household Energy and Health http://www.who.int/indoorair/publications/fuelforlife/en/index.html
7	Ensure environmental sustainability	Less pressure on forest resources Less burning of dung Less CO2 emissions Less black carbon	Less deforestation, and avoided costs for afforestation Less land degradation as dung can be used as fertilizer Climate protection
8	Develop a global partnership for development	Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) since 2002 Global Alliance of Clean Cookstoves (GACC) since 2010		http://www.pciaonline.org/ http://cleancookstoves.org/

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Cooking Initatives on the International Agenda

Since 2010, cooking energy has become more visible on the international agenda. Decentralized basic energy services have gained importance, and not just because of oil prices increases. It will be difficult to reach rural and poor populations in many countries with only national electricity grids. Wood and other biomass energy are more realistics and therefore, their relevance is becoming more ackowledged.
The UN Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change calls for two additional goals to be reached by the international community by 2030: universal access to modern energy services and improved energy efficiency.

To emphasize the importance of access to sustainable energy, the UN declared the year 2012 "International Year of Sustainable Energy for All".

Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves

"The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves“ was presented in 2010 in the margins of the UN summit on the Millennium Development Goals in New York. The Alliance’s goal ‘100 by 20’ calls for 100 million homes to adopt clean and efficient stoves and fuels by 2020.
The Alliance is going to work with private, public, and non-profit partners. Founding partners are i.e. the governments of the US, Germany, Norway and Peru, Shell, Morgan Stanley, WHO, UNEP, and several other organizations.
Its aim is to “save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women and combat climate change” by creating a thriving global market. The Alliance promotes major public awareness campaigns and the establishment of industry standards worldwide. Furthermore, they want to support the development of local and international markets for clean cookstoves and fuels, and fund further research.
For further information visit: Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves.

Program of Action 2015

The Program of action 2015 was passed by the German Federal Government in 2001. It describes the contributions made by Germany to reach the Millennium Goals.

Paragraph 3.6 (Ensuring Access to Vital Resources) stresses the importance of sustainable energy policies. Special emphasis is put on those dealing with energy efficiency and renewable energies for reducing poverty. The German government commits itself to supporting its partner countries with regard to energy generation and energy supplies for poor rural areas. These locations are remote from the national grid and thus require renewable energy sources (e.g., biomass, solar energy, wind) and an enabling environment to facilitate poor people's access to efficient, grid-based electricity.

-> Program of the action 2015 (2001) GIZ-link.

UN Convention to Combat Desertification

The UNCCD, which came into force in 1996, emphasises the importance of the efficient use of energy, including the promotion of alternative sources to reduce dependency on wood fuels (UNCCD). The use of efficient cookstoves reduces the stresses on fragile ecosystems and thus creates positive impacts, such as reduced erosion and improved soil fertility. Many National Action Programmes (e.g. Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia) consider the over exploitation of wood for fuel as one of the major causes of deforestation and land degradation. They therefore promote the introduction of energy-saving stoves, the sustainable use and production of wood fuels, renewable energy sources other than wood, and fuel switching.

Agenda 21

Agenda 21 was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It is a comprehensive plan of action to be adopted globally, nationally, and locally by organizations within the UN, and by governments and major groups in every area which experience human impact on the environment.

Sustainable access to energy and its efficient use plays a role in several chapters of Section II of the Agenda. These chapters relate to the conservation and management of resources for development (especially chapters 9, 11, 14).
-> Download of the Agenda 21 (UN)

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Cooking energy programmes are linked to the UNFCCC through actions to conserve forests and promote renewable energy sources. There has been a lot of interest recently in carbon credit financing for improved stove projects. Since 2006, stove organizations have begun to receive funding from carbon credits.The UNFCCC entered into force in 1994.  The Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005, is a supplement to this treaty. 

-> Download of the Kyoto Protocol (UN)

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP)

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) describe a country's macroeconomic, structural, and social policies and programmes over a time horizon of at least three years. They are aimed at promoting a wide spectrum of growth initiatives and poverty reduction, and identify needs for external financing and major sources of financing. The papers are oriented towards achieving the MDGs. They are prepared by countries through a participatory process involving both domestic stakeholders and external development partners, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. PRSPs are updated every three years by annual progress reports. They are a necessary prerequisite for debt relief.

-> World Bank: PRSP Sourcebook

The PRSP Sourcebook (World Bank) assists countries in preparation of poverty reduction strategies. Annex Q ‘Energy: Technical Note’ provides a suggested structure for presenting energy/poverty linkages and sector goals in preparing a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Especially under the sections ‘Social Sector Development’, and ‘Natural Resources and the Environment’, the role of firewood for cooking is highlighted. Gender aspects, management of forest resources, and access to energy are the core issues highlighted in respect of cooking energy, and indicators such as availability and costs of improved cookstoves, and time collecting firewood are given. Potential energy strategies, including promotion of improved stoves through micro credit schemes and policies for sustainable forest use and management by communities, are discussed.  Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) by country

A study done by UNDP in 2007 (Energizing Poverty Reduction) examines to what degree energy-poverty dynamics are reflected in current policies and plans set forth by national Poverty Reduction Strategies.

In 2009, UNDP (Energy in National Decentralization Policies: LDC's and Sub-Saharan Africa) analized whether and how energy is taken into consideration within national decentralization policies in LDCs and in SSA, providing a broad overview of the current situation on decentralization-energy linkages. Cooking and heating was explicitly mentioned in the context of decentralization for only one country. But in many countries, policies and programmes represent opportunities for linking national policies and programmes with local level consultation and planning.

-> UNDP, Environment & Energy, Featured publications

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Cooking Energy on the Regional and National Agenda

More and more regional and national organisations are developing policies relevant to cooking energy.

Ecowas White Paper for a Regional Policy

In 2006, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) developed the White Paper for a Regional Policy: Geared toward Increasing Access to Energy Services for Rural and Peri-Urban Populations in order to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals (2005)
This ambitious White Paper explicitly refers to cooking energy:
‘The objective for 2015 is for all of the population to have access to a modern or improved cooking service.

This may be obtained through:

• Access to modern fuels – which requires, in the case of LPG, that households buy a gas stove and canister.
• Improved biomass stoves, in conjunction with the construction of chimneys to reduce indoor air pollution. Where biomass is used, biomass production must be sustainable, using sustainable energy crops. This entails…carrying out in-depth reform of the forestry and rural sectors.’

The white paper aims at prioritising access to energy in the national PRSPs of the West African member states.

Southern African Development Community (SADC)

During the last two decades,  the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has outlined its energy strategy and policy in several documents such as SADC Protocol on Energy (1996), the SADC Energy Cooperation Policy and Strategy (1996) and the SADC Energy Activity Plan (2000), among others. However, these documents are in the process of being updated. SADC has recently formulated the Regional Energy Access Strategy and Action Plan (RESAP) as a step towards realigning the Energy sector to emerging issues.

EAC

A "Regional Strategy on Scaling-Up Access to Modern Energy Services" EAC (East African Community countries—Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania) has been prepared with assistance from the UNDP and GIZ. The Strategy aims at facilitating achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and poverty reduction by developing MDG-based energy access investments in the framework of High Impact Low Cost Scalable options for four target areas including access to modern cooking practices for 50% of traditional biomass users and access to reliable modern energy services for all urban and peri-urban poor.

-> Regional Strategy on Scaling Up Access to Modern Energy Services in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and Poverty Reduction (2009)

Countries Examples

A very encouraging example of what can be achieved through the combination of political will, funding for implementation, and technical assistance is the national campaign in Peru:

The national campaign "Half a million improved cooking stoves for a smoke free Peru" ("Medio Millón de Cocinas Mejoradas: Por un Perú sin Humo") was launched in June 2009. The partnership is formed by public and private institutions, such as the Presidency, several Ministries, regional and local governments, GIZ, private companies, universities, and NGOs. Currently, 50 % of the people in Peru use traditional biomass for cooking. The goal until 2011 is to install 500,000 stoves. For stoves to be considered improved stoves and to be disseminated as part of the campaign, they must meet certain quality standards: fast cooking time, energy efficiency, carbon emissions, security, and acceptance by the population. All the stoves boil 5 litres of water within half an hour and reduce the contamination in the kitchen by up to 90 %.
The objectives of the campaign are:

• provide a framework to facilitate the inclusion and strengthening of public, private, and international cooperation initiatives and partnerships;
• facilitate coordination, exchange of experiences and technical assistance strategies, management, logistics, processes, models of intervention, monitoring, and technology;
• ensure quality and proper use of improved stoves certified in the process.

As of June 2011, there were 155,023 stoves installed. More information and results.

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Cooking Energy and Focal Areas of German Development Cooperation

Access to modern cooking energy contributes to all of the priority sectors of the German Development Cooperation.
The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will focus its cooperation in the future on the following sectors: education, health, rural development, good governance, and sustainable economic development.
Clean and efficient cooking energy specifically contributes to these sectors in the following ways:

Education – Particularly Basic Education

• An increase in the numbers of women and children with a basic education is promoted through:
  - Decreasing the workload (fuel collection and cooking) of women and children, can lead to higher attendance and less fatigue,     which facilitates learning at school.
  - Healthy children do not miss out on education, so the cycle of poverty can be broken through better qualifications in the next generation.
• A child with a full stomach learns better than a child with an empty one: school feeding programs can provide more food or better quality food if they save on fuel expenses.

• The education sector can foster increased awareness about cooking and renewable energy:
  - Integrating cooking energy information into school curricula, thereby educating more children directly, and indirectly sensitizing parents and neighbours about cooking energy issues.
  - Increasing knowledge and awareness about environmental, health, and economic issues by instigating cooking energy awareness campaigns.

Health – Including Family Planning & HIV / Aids

Every year, almost two million people die due to diseases caused by indoor air pollution (IAP) and a substantial number of children suffer serious burns. The use of clean burning stoves can lead to:

• A reduction in mortality and morbidity, especially among women and children, through:
  - A reduction of respiratory diseases.
  - A reduction of eye diseases.
  - Less health hazards for pregnant women and infants.
  - Relief for HIV/Aids patients and families through reduced respiratory ailments, improved nutrition, and hot water for hygiene purposes.
  - Reduced risk of accidental burns especially for children through provision of safer stoves and kitchens.

• Healthy people are generally more productive, enabling some people to break the vicious circle of poverty.
• Children suffering respiratory ailments due to IAP are a financial burden, particularly in female-headed households, as women have to care for their children rather than earning income, and they have to find money for medication.
• With efficient stoves, families have more energy available for the same amount of fuel. This extra energy can be used for boiling water to remove pathogens.

Rural Development - Integrated Approaches

• Access to affordable and reliable cooking energy allows for rural development activities such as:
  - income generation in rural areas: If people spend less time for collecting fuels and cooking, they are able to spend more time     on productive activities.New jobs are created in rural areas by decentralized production of efficient cooking stoves.
  - improving living standards: money saved on fuel is used for education and convenience goods.
  - improving health: People who are less effected by smoke are more likely to work and foster rural development.
  - improving food security in rural areas: Since 90 % of all daily food requires energy (cooking, baking, and drying), and energy   efficient stoves can save between 40 and 80 % of fuel, increasing fuel availability for food preparation can facilitate more regular  and nutritious meals, especially for families coping with fuelwood shortages.
  - improving levels of basic education: In rural areas, time and energy saved through improved cooking stoves enable children to focus more on their education.
• Access to affordable and reliable cooking energy also allows for conservation and sustainable utilisation of natural resources:
  - reduction of deforestation, soil degradation, and erosion
  - reduction of dung needed as a fuel, thereby enabling dung to be used as a fertilizer on fields, yielding a more productive harvest
  - re-afforestation measures to support sustainable wood fuel supply, such as by planting multi-purpose trees for fuelwood, fruit production and animal fodder
  - introduction of sustainable forest management systems as source of income
  - encouraging the shift to alternative renewable cooking fuels (green fuels), such as plant oils, ethanol, and solar

Good Governance - Democracy, Civil Society, Public Services

• Decentralised provision of basic energy services empowers community government structures, which in turn promote sustainable cooking energy supplies and efficient energy use.
• Political participation of the poor can increase if less time is spent collecting firewood.
• More women are becoming stove users and producers, thereby improving their working conditions and status in both the family and the community. This happens through:
  - reducing their daily workload
  - increasing their participation and decision-making power
  - enabling ownership of technologies, through improved equipment and know-how
  - enabling income generation through production of cooking energy technologies.

Sustainable Economic Development

• Establishment of new market opportunities for energy efficient technologies, thereby creating additional business opportunities in stove production and sales for both men and women.
• Improved infrastructure through better access to affordable basic energy services enhances small business development.
• A decrease in the money spent on fuel leads to an increased share of the household budget available for productive use for income generation.
• Efficient stoves save time which can then be used in a productive way such as: food production in gardens and on farm land, food processing, poultry raising, establishing a tree nursery, etc.
• Small restaurants save a lot of money by using energy-saving stoves. This money can be invested into the restaurant, improving food quality or simply leading to more income.
• Food processing using energy efficient technologies (like solar dryers) increases agricultural value chains and income generation.
• Re-afforestation measures and sustainable wood fuel production can be an additional source of income for farmers.

Access to energy contributes to reducing poverty in a sustainable manner and therefore helps to reach the MDGs. Efficient cooking stoves in particular can provide some of the most vulnerable people worldwide with access to modern energy.
Creating local markets for efficient cooking stoves leads to structural changes within the region, but it also affects global challenges. Increasing energy efficiency reduces green house gas emissions and saves fuels to prolong environmental resources worldwide.

For more information on the priority areas and the promotion of renewable energy for development of the BMZ see: Issues on Energy, and on Biomass.

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Lessons Learnt from Improved Cookstove Projects

Disseminating improved cookstove is not per se a success story despite the fact that they have several advantages in comparison to traditional cooking technologies. For example, in a recent study of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in India the benefit of providing clean cook stoves to poor households was disappointing. Improved stoves were sold to 2600 households at a subsidized price of 75 US cents, whereas the real price of the stove was 12.50 USD. The usage of these subsidized stoves were lower than expected right from the beginning and declined markedly over time. Households generally did not make maintenance investments (e.g., cleaning the chimney) to keep the stoves operational. Most households continued to use their traditional stove.
Over the time when the improved stove detoriated the use of the traditional stove became more and more dominant. Consequently, the introduction of the improved stove rather soon failed to reduce firewood consumption, indoor air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Similar results are know from other studies. Therefore, it is important to analyse the reasons, why certain stove projects failed although the new stoves offer major benefits to the households, and to understand the barriers to adoption and proper use.

The lessons formulated here contain the essence of long years of GIZ experience in assistance to development, production, and dissemination of locally produced improved stoves. They were crucial in the development of GIZ’s current approaches.
This analysis includes impact assessment studies of projects practising “results based monitoring” in order to ensure that the intended development results were actually achieved. This means that these “lessons learnt“ do not only focus on the planning, development, production, and dissemination of improved cook stoves, but also provide an analysis of the effectiveness of the monitoring system in order to improve and speed up the dissemination process in the future. Many of these ‘lessons learnt’ may sound obvious, but they are essential to provide long-term sustainability.

Planning and policy level:

• An in-depth feasibility study that looks carefully into the various interrelated aspects (poverty-alleviation, gender, cost-benefit calculations, lifestyle improvement, technical efficiency, environmental impact, policy) that affect the implementation process will be instrumental in assuring adequate planning.
• Continuous monitoring and flexibility in planning is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for being able to react quickly to planning mistakes. Time for the project personnel to react to the consequences of planning mistakes also plays a major role.
• Integrated concepts, which are complementary to other developmental activities, create synergy effects, are cost-effective and bring quicker results.
• At a development policy level, sound economic analyses that prove the positive cost-benefit relations of using improved cook stoves are a good way to convince decision makers of the relevance of clean and efficient energy provision and its relationship with other aspects of development to reach the MDGs.
• A participatory approach, which recognizes the importance of gender relations, provides the best chances for a new technology to be accepted. However, it is a subject that has to be carefully monitored. For example, in Kenya it was found that as stove building became more profitable, more men have taken over the job of liner production and stove building. They were more successful, as they could travel more easily while women had other household duties to perform. This follows a general trend through history that as soon as a task becomes really profitable, men replace women at the job. This is a point that should be carefully monitored and strategies should be developed to give women an equal chance to profit from the production and sale of stoves.

Product Development:

• For a product to be acceptable to the users, it has to have high quality standards, i.e. be available, affordable, reliable, and bring measurable advantages in terms of money or time savings, reduction of indoor air pollution or ease of practical use.
• Products must be attractive, modern, and desirable in the eyes of the users.
• Products must be easy to use and maintain
• A serious, frequently-encountered problem is that most people whose stove is in a poor condition still consider them functional. People prefer them to the 3-stone fire, mainly because they could do other things while the food was cooking. Here, repeated awareness raising is necessary to show the relationship between stove condition and efficiency.
• The lifetime of a stove depends on the quality of the basic materials and on how well it is maintained. This should be monitored carefully and continuously until a high quality product can be assured.
• Where stoves are only produced seasonally (rainy or dry period, depending on the work to be done in the fields), the comparatively lower production endangers the quality of the stove, as skills are not always fully developed or kept up
• On the organizational level, producers and stove builders should form professional organizations where the importance of quality labelling, providing warranties, and user awareness are discussed and organized.
• A functional networking system optimizes knowledge transfer and South-South exchange. Through project exchange visits, the learning effect is often higher than in a training course situation.
• International stove standards are in the process of being developed. They will need to be adapted to the specific situation in each country and regularly brought up to date.

Dissemination Approach:

• A fully commercial approach is the most important step in achieving long-term sustainability. It should be practiced from the very beginning wherever possible, unless special circumstances (refugee situations, environmental catastrophes) prevent this option.
• The most crucial indicator for sustainability is the timely replacement of the stove by the user after its lifetime has expired.
• A dissemination structure where organizations are paid on the basis of the number of stoves built, bears the danger of failure, because where quantity goes before quality there may be insufficient time to properly train the producers and users and get them acquainted with good maintenance.
• A strong focus on advisory and technical support for the partners may be more important than giving only financial assistance. Sound training of local technical and marketing expertise is the best guarantee of having a successful project in the long run.
• For NGOs to be motivated and effective, they should have the chance to earn money through the sale of the product.
• Appropriate incentives and adequate monitoring are key factors for success when disseminating a technology. In order to achieve a sustainable market development and long-lasting impacts, it is necessary to set up independent control mechanisms independent of the financing institutions.
• There is a limit to the number of cooperating partner organizations that can be effectively monitored. Involving too many partners at the same time may jeopardise effective dissemination, because effective monitoring may no longer be possible.
• Changing dissemination strategies in the course of a project should only take place after intensive discussion with the artisans and the users to make sure that everyone understands the reasoning behind the change and they are ready not only to accept, but decide favourably by themselves.

Marketing and Financing:

• There is a need for government or donors to support the responsible partner organisations for at least five (better ten) years. It takes time to overcome old habits and  establish new local structures for necessities such as technical and business training, research, promotion, and monitoring activities. The average costs for maintenance services on the other hand should be included in the price of the stove, or there should be set rates for maintenance services.
• It is more advantageous to offer micro-credit opportunities and longer payment periods than building stoves for free, branding the user as poor and not being able to afford a quality product. Psychologically, it is better to advertise the product as modern, healthy, attractive, something everyone ‘must have’ - and then make sure that it is affordable even for the less wealthy.
• Independent stove producers, who are known to produce high quality products and have learned to promote it by labelling their products and advertising it, should be able to competitively market their stoves.
• Saving fuel wood, money and time, and smoke reduction are the most important benefits reported by small businesses like restaurants or bakeries.
• Many users still lack knowledge of the health benefits of smoke-reduced cooking with an efficient cookstove. Local health services should be involved in spreading this message and health monitoring should be planned and carried out jointly.

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References

This article was originally published by GIZ HERA. It is basically based on experiences, lessons learned and information gathered by GIZ cook stove projects. You can find more information about the authors and experts of the original “Cooking Energy Compendium” in the Imprint.

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