What is the Problem

Around 3 billion people cook using open biomass stoves and each year. Close to 3.8 million people die prematurely + 25% of all black carbon emitted is a result of these stoves (significant source of climate change)

Especially in low and middle-income countries (large parts of Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal), poor individuals rely on burning biomass (wood, animal dung, crop waste) in open stoves for their cooking needs.  Cooking biomass in an open stove releases particulate matter, black carbon, and a number of toxic gases (including methane, carbon monoxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and volatile organic compounds (VOC)).

This cooking practice leads to a number of:

• Health Issues: Major diseases resulting from this cooking practice are childhood pneumonia, stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer, and cognitive decline

• Environmental Issues: These stoves contribute to 25% of all black carbon emitted, which is a second most significant contributor to climate change. Particulate Matter and methane emitted by these cookstoves are powerful climate change pollutants and lead to global warming. In addition, use of firewood in many parts of the world also contributes to deforestation, and soil erosion as a secondary effect

Women and children bear the brunt of health issues from this, as they spend majority of their time cooking. Additionally, inefficient cooking prevents women from income generating work.

Source WHO

What is the Root Cause

1) People use these open Biomass Stoves because this the cheapest and most accessible option

It’s too expensive for people to switch to a cleaner cooking method. If even they can afford it, technologies such as open biomass stoves are not accessible. The easiest option for them is to create their own makeshift stove and gather wood to burn.

2) These stoves have an inefficient design

These stoves are not very efficient in burning biomass. Some of these toxic gases, which would have typically been burnt off in secondary burn in a more efficient stove, get released while using an open design stove. In addition, most of these stoves don’t contain the gases or have a good venting system (e.g. using a chimney). This leads to toxic gases and particulate matter lingering around the cooking area. This issue is magnified if these stoves are inside their home (either in their main living area or in a separate cooking hut). Cooking is typical done inside, since its not practical to cook outside due to bad weather.

What has been so far to address this Problem

There has been considerable allocation of resources & focus to solve this problem

The community of clean cookstove proponents and developers, known as “stovers,” started in the 1970s, in which experts argued that poorer people are stuck in poverty because of inefficient technologies that could be easily improved. One example of this is the open Biomass Stove. This community has created a large variety of more effective designs of cookstoves (including gasifier stoves which contains a fan to more efficiently burn-off toxic gases). They also explored using other technologies, including LPG gas stoves, solar and biogas.

In 2010, the UN Foundation and Hillary Clinton (in her capacity as the US Secretary of State), launched the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. Their objective was to deploy millions of more clean cookstoves that would lead to better health, reduction in deforestation and help tackle climate change.

Unfortunately, majority of these implementations have not had the desired results

A number of studies conducted since have found that new improved stoves from these programs were not being used ~6-12 months post implementation. In addition, there was no improvement to the health of women and children who were exposed to the cooking.

The primary reason users resisted switching to a new stove was because of a strong emotional attachment to their existing stove. They wanted to cook on the same stove that they had constructed themselves and that their grandmother had used! Another reason for the poor results from the implementations is that researchers had improper understanding of the local requirements and use cases (e.g. size of pots; type of cooking; number of burners needed) and did not customize the stove designs to meet these requirements. E.g. in Nepal, two dishes are cooked simultaneously but the new stove that was given to the users only had one bruner. They essentially “parachuted” in, implemented and left. They did not spend the time to build connections with the community, educate them on why they need to make the switch, or obtain their buy-in. These stoves were complex, expensive, would break often, and were not easy to repair locally. In the end, it came to the fact that people simply didn’t value the stoves enough to maintain and continue using them.

There is a silver-living…few non-profits have been successful

During my research, I did find a few non-profits who have a large percentage of their stoves in use 8-10 years post implementation. The common thread is that they did not make the mistakes that I mentioned above. One of them is Prakti, that I am currently volunteering for. This nonprofit has successfully deployed over 20,000 stoves in India and Haiti since 2013.

What am I doing to address this Problem

• I did independent research on this topic of indoor air pollution, including researching World Health Organization’s and Clean Cooking Alliance’s websites.

• I cold-called and spoke to a number of experts, including engineers at EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), experts at Aprovecho Research Center in Oregon (a testing lab with significant experience in testing cookstoves), and founders of a number of cookstove non-profits.

• I have come to the conclusion on how best to solve this problem

  • Based on my research I have come to the conclusion that the best way to address this problem is not to replace the entire cookstove (the conventional wisdom), but to keep the cookstove that they are already using (however inefficient it may be) and instead make the combustion more effective. This way we can address the majority of issues that have prevented successful implementations in the past. 

  • Combustion can be made more effective by blowing air at the base of the fire, resulting in the fire reaching a higher temperature that burns particulate matter and other toxic substances in a secondary burn. Since fire burns at a higher temperature, food cooks much faster and less wood is used, also reducing black carbon emissions.

  • This solution is inexpensive, easy to use, and users will continue to use their existing cookstoves that they have emotional attachment with. This is a new and innovative idea since all the solutions implemented so far to address this problem have been to replace the entire cookstove!

• I created & tested my own prototype of a device to improve combustion in order to address this problem

  • From my experiment, I measured that AQI (Air Quality Index that measures amount of particulate matter) decreased by 69.4%. This is the most critical metric since reducing it will directly improve the user's health. Wood consumed (and therefore black carbon emissions) decreased by 52.3% and time to cook was reduced by 67.9%.

  • These are phenomenal results!

• Since March ‘22 I have volunteered with Prakti, a social enterprise company based in Thailand, focussed on improving combustion in cookstoves. As part of my engagement, I  worked with Prakti engineers to improve design of their products, conduct pilot of their stoves in villages, and created their new website. I am now working to scale implementations in coffee plantations in India and Laos.

• I was instrumental in convincing an Indian non-profit (The Kalgidhar Trust) to do a pilot of Prakti’s latest product in one of their local villages in India. I spent 2 weeks in India for the pilot. Click here to see the learnings from the Pilot.

• I raised money to scale implementations of Prakti cookstoves ($2600 as of Feb ‘23). You can donate here.

Here is a short video that provides a summary of insights from my research, including a behind a scenes look at testing of my prototype device

What can you do

• Educate yourself on this problem

• Raise awareness among your friends and family members

• Volunteer your time and use your skills to help a non-profit making real change in this field

• Donate Money