Crossing space, connecting people: the story that comes with a little cook stove

Cross-published on Youth Exchange of Perspectives

When I read through Jared’s updates of his time in China, he reminded me the fundamental cultural exposure and experience that are essential in a cross-cultural encounter. It is an element I sometimes neglect while I am carrying a more important personal “global environmental” agenda with me to Kenya for the second time. Despite being a researcher of environmental issues this time, I find myself still a “CUYCEer (or YEPer now)” even though I am a continent away from both China and the U.S. It is not my intention to devote my first blog on this site to talk about my experience in none of the two countries, but I have to say my life in Kenya and the other life with YEP are so much intertwined on so many aspects. One is feeding the growth of another. It is a continuously and organically evolving curly cue. Therefore I hope the story that comes with my interest in cook stove in Kenya will shed some light on “youth for sustainability” across the border to my fellow YEPers.

To make a lengthy story short, before the UN Climate Change meeting in Cancun, I had been interning at the UN Environmental Program in Nairobi, Kenya for half a year. Having attended the previous climate meeting in Copenhagen and felt at home with the international youth climate movement, I readily become a devotee to the African Youth Initiative on climate change Kenya chapter (AYICC-K) even before I landed Nairobi. Because of my personal interests in cook stoves in less developed countries (another “carry-over” interest from my time with Energy Crossroads Denmark), members of AYICC-K introduced me to a slew of youth-led community-based organizations across Kenya that are engaged with improved cook stove dissemination. One such visit was to the Tembea Youth Center for Sustainable Development, close to the northern shore of Lake Victoria in the western part of Kenya. It was just an overnight visit and once again I am drawn back to the African sun that shines a billion things to life. This time I am back for the summer to both conduct research for my honor thesis and to rekindle the inspirations and enthusiasm that I had from my equally energetic young Kenyan friends.

Then here comes what is “curly cue” about it. Out of last year’s visits and interactions with my fellow AYICCers, together around eight of us started the Rural Energy Enterprises Network, or REEN (just to add more acronyms for your information). Therefore this year’s research trip is also intended to generate knowledge to build the foundation upon which REEN delivers its vision. But it is preciously with CUYCE and YEP since Copenhagen that I come to understand and learn what it takes to plant a seed, nurture and grow it. Yes the equatorial African landscape and soil is a completely different picture from that of China and the U.S., the good ingredients of exchange, partnership and collaboration are more or less the same. The same passion – the belief in bridging individuals and building networks to defend planetary sustainability and the confidence in the young people of the world to deliver grand vision – takes me from China to the U.S., from Copenhagen to Cancun, and onto Kenya.

And we are blessed with possibilities, of which we can make changes. What my young colleagues in Kenya inspire me the most are their creativity and entrepreneurship in tackling climate change, environment and development issues. Tembea, which I base my research on, has recently engaged in a carbon offset project that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the diffusion of energy efficient cook stoves. In many parts of the world, people are still cooking with open fires made of three stones or other types of traditional stoves deemed “grossly inefficient.” The heavy and toxic smoke coming out of these stoves is killing some 1.6 million people worldwide (especially women and children,) annually, not to mention the trees being cut down and other environmental and health issues. At least the WHO says so, and many more (governments and donors alike) who are concerned with energy supply and deforestation in developing countries and their consequence globally.

In a much prolonged two-year long pilot phase, Tembea has constructed over 1600 energy efficient cook stoves in rural households, maintained 50 artisans or technicians (male and female, mostly young people) and facilitated over 130 community saving and loaning groups. The new stoves are also called “rocket stove” for its internal air and fire tunnel, and is about 50% more efficient than the traditional three stone open fire. Tembea, with funding from a carbon project developer based in Europe, subsidizes the stove to only cost households 500 Kenya Shiling (less than 6 dollars). The saving groups function to help members pay for the stove, as well as to support members with financial and other socio-economic needs. Tembea also intends to train these groups to act as empowered grassroots unit to be able to lobby for their own interests in the government system in the near future.

As a carbon-financed project in the premier voluntary carbon market, this stove program is soon to benefit from carbon credits priced around 20 Euros per ton of carbon dioxide saved. One cook stove is estimated to save 1-2 ton a year, and the plan is to install 7, 200 stoves in a 7 year project life cycle. The math is looking good, only if everything goes well with the carbon registration and validation process with Gold Standard. It has a highly complex project set up, involving many stakeholders, monitoring and validation processes. It has been an assiduous journey to fulfill the various requirements demanded by the offset standards.

This is why you often hear high transaction costs associated with small scale carbon project (with many individual components) and a general lack of capacity to implement carbon-financed projects in Africa. Tembea’s collaboration with the European-based carbon developer therefore has a lot to offer in terms of capacity building for the whole continent. On the other hand, I also look into challenges, issues of equity, and even systemic pitfalls a carbon offset project like this faces, hence the effectiveness of it to address climate change and sustainable development. Whatever the term means. Carbon offset has good potential, but that’s the only solution.

Eight hours away from Tembea, in a place near the capital city Nairobi, another youth-led enterprise is doing something similar, but in a very different approach. Several days ago when I went back to Nairobi to renew my American visa, I had the chance to revisit Peter Thuo, the owner of GreenTech Inc. and director of Ruiru Youth Center for Empowerment Program. From the latter to the former, Peter has moved from raising awareness of HIV/AIDS, constructing efficient cook stoves, onto building biogas digestors, greenhouse for vegetables and energy briquette made of waste materials. For Peter, innovating keeps him burning and a social enterprise model is what works the best in his case.

And this is where REEN strives to come in to the exchange of ideas and expertise among these resourceful youth groups and give birth to new enterprises that will thrill in their particular environment. It is a REEN for Kenyans, for Africans and for all who are young, energetic, sympathetic and eager to meet the challenge of our world. It is the same energy that fuels my engagement with CUYCE/ YEP, as well as REEN. At the same time, I see many ways in which lessons can be learned from one enterprise to another, no matter where and who they are. People need to communicate with one another, no matter the region, tribe or color.

By now I could have started writing a book of my time in the middle of nowhere in this Kenya village, just to tell you how different life is here. Where I am with Tembea in one of the poorest regions in Kenya, electricity connection rate is around 2% and I am lucky to have water to shower in bucket. Half of the population in rural area lives under literally “1 dollar a day.” Half of the staff at Tembea has only high school degree and most are below the age of 25. For the past 8 years they have accomplished a list of social and environment projects with an inventory of local and international partners, with very limited resources. For most of them, personal computers and Internet are rare species and the round talks with the UN are still too remote and surreal.

In the past several months, I have been grateful on the receiving end of the hard work YEPers have engaged and delivered. For all of you have enlightened me to take a parallel path on another side of the planet. Everyone is doing fascinating work on your end. I wish to bring your more stories in the following days.

Photo à la une-Sudanese women venture out to collect firewood

just echoed the importance of efficient cook-stove (less than 4 dollar), imagine just a 50% efficiency increase from the open fire stove, you can save one day's trip!


Featured Photo | Photo à la une

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Posted: 5 October 2010 | Posté : 5 octobre 2010

Sudanese women from Kassab Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) Camp in Kutum, North Darfur, venture out to collect firewood. They were escorted by South African peacekeepers of the African Union-United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID), as the women IDPs often fear being raped by rebel fighters or criminals when they leave their homes | UN Photo: 443583

Des femmes soudanaises du camps Kassab de personnes déplacées internes à Kutum, dans le Nord du Darfour, ramassent du bois à brûler. Elles sont escortées par des casques bleus sud-africains de l'Opération hybride Union africaine-Nations Unies au Darfour (MINUAD), car les femmes déplacées internes craignent souvent d'être violées par des combattants rebels ou des criminels lorsqu'elles sortent de chez elles | UN Photo: 443583

Previous featured photos | Précédentes photos à la une

A Small Stove With Big Ambitions

The invention of a tiny stove in India demonstrates the link between reduced carbon emissions and improved health – and how technology can contribute to slowing climate change. Global energy giant BP is producing and marketing Oorja, which means energy in Hindi, a small pellet stove that produces substantially fewer emissions than the traditional wood-burning stoves so common throughout India. In developing the stove, BP ran models by rural consumers. A team of businesswomen based in villages sell stoves and fuel made of agricultural waste products, while also offering BP advice on promoting other energy products to rural India’s millions. The multinational corporation does not expect to earn profit on the product until 2010, and the very poor cannot afford it, but the small stove still points to a new direction. In wealthy and poor countries alike, efforts to control climate changes will require innovative and affordable alternative-energy products, combined with meticulous grassroots marketing campaigns in order to change old habits. – YaleGlobal

world.

SULEBHAAVI, India: As India's richest families race to outfit their kitchens with the latest European trappings, thousands of village entrepreneurs are discovering how to squeeze profits from a squat $17 stove locally designed to reduce global warming and preserve women's health.

Named "Oorja," meaning energy in Hindi, the stove is part of India’s answer to rising concern over India's total emissions – the fourth largest in the world and likely to climb due to surging energy needs and the unveiling of the globe's cheapest car. Unlike many government or NGO-funded projects, this one relies on India’s keen entrepreneurs.

Such businesswomen include Lakshmi Babu Pitagi, who began her career by selling tea door to door in the quiet lanes of Karnataka’s Sulebhaavi village. Now she is part of a rapidly growing network of women recruited to sell an innovative biomass stove run on fuel pellets made from ground nut and other agricultural residues.

Pitagi seeks to liberate her neighbors from relentless eye-watering fumes of traditional wood-burning stoves, which pose serious health hazards and expand India's carbon footprint. And she expresses confidence that she can make money in the process. Within seven months of launching the product, she convinced a quarter of Sulebhaavi's households to purchase the stove.

"This is a lifelong business," crows Pitagi, 33, who makes a slender commission on the hexagonal 675-rupee metal stoves and the 20-rupee sacks of pellets to keep them burning. As she and other vendors learn the trade, they are also educating their boss, global energy giant BP, about the challenges of rural marketing in a culturally diverse nation that’s just beginning to tap into the "base of the pyramid" of consumer power.

Hundreds of millions of Indian villagers still rely on wood-burning stoves, as gas remains a remote luxury in many states. Rural families report that it costs roughly 330 rupees per month, or $8.50, to cook entirely with gas, and many can't save the lump sum required for a gas cylinder. In contrast, BP's vendors pitch the affordability of a weekly supply of two sacks of pellets, which tend to be 50 rupees cheaper than wood purchased in a local market.

On the environmental front, a 2006 report prepared by an independent agency concludes that the stove reduces carbon monoxide by 71 percent and lessens suspended particulate matter by 34 percent. Cooking takes less time because the pellets burn more efficiently than wood, explains H.S. Mukunda, a professor at the Combustion, Gasification and Propulsion Laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Biomass use would thus fall from 1.5 to 2 tons per family per year to 0.4 to 0.6 tons per family per year, he says.

The idea of a cleaner stove is hardly novel in India, where indoor air pollution kills nearly 400,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization.

But in contrast to previous government and philanthropic efforts to simply give away newfangled stoves – programs that have proved largely unsustainable throughout Asia – BP is relying on commercial gusto to spur product acceptance. The company will also test the stove in Vietnam and China later this year.

By giving dealers an incentive to keep supplying the pellets long after they make their first commission on the stove, BP has swerved away from the longtime practice of dumping a stove on consumers and letting them fend for themselves to find fuel.

Pellet delivery trucks roll to Pitagi's door and the company supplies a pamphlet that invokes the Hindu goddess of prosperity and reads, “When you use Oorja, it's like inviting the goddess Lakshmi into your home.”

For the energy giant, however, this is yet to become a profitable venture. The company is striving for greater economies of scale and more technical modifications to erase the 225-rupee gap between the stove's current manufacturing cost and retail price. Citing a "long-term commitment," BP officials decline to release figures on the scale of its investment since the project's low-key launch in late 2006.

Still, with a sales goal of one million stoves by the end of 2009 and a break-even target of 2010, company managers are cheered by the market response, with more than 7,000 new consumers each week purchasing an Oorja stove. The company has recruited and trained entrepreneurs in 2,750 villages across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra states, where they racked up sales of nearly 200,000 stoves.

Many analysts agree that the commercial approach has better odds for success. "Anything that comes to the beneficiaries for free is not taken seriously," says Pradeep Kashyap, vice president of the Rural Marketing Agencies Association of India. Kashyap, who has evaluated previous stove projects, recalls other stoves that ended up as dusty shoe boxes because government programs typically suffer from "no targets, no accountability, and no responsibility."

But in a country with poor roads, ensuring a reliable network for repairs and pellet supply represents a major challenge for BP. Eschewing national advertising, the company has zeroed in on local tactics, including village fairs, roadside demonstrations and mobile vans. Training sessions tap experienced village entrepreneurs to coach novices.

It's a costly exercise. But BP is betting that the learning process will pay off later when it tries to bring other products into rural markets, including low-cost lighting and heating devices. This is the first time the company has mounted a methodical search for grassroots consumers, although it has made other attempts to diversify into alternative energies, including wind power, solar power and jatropha biofuel.

Ironically, it was a 2001 breakthrough in manufacturing cheap computer fans that led to the possibility of creating a low-cost stove for the masses, recounts Mukunda, whose team had been pondering various designs since 1986.

To be sure, Oorja remains out of reach for the poorest of the poor. Women who walk for hours to collect free firewood in India generally cannot afford a one-time payment of 675 rupees. Entrepreneurs like Pitagi generally refuse to supply the stoves on installments, except when it comes to their own relatives. For all the buzz generated by microfinance initiatives in India, no viable plan has emerged.

"We accept the fact that we don't have the means to reach the people at the extreme lower end of the spectrum," says Sunitha Krishnamurthi, general manager for marketing at BP Energy India Pvt. Ltd, the Bangalore-based unit that is spearheading the Oorja project. "Our audience makes more than $2 a day."

One exception is Lakshmibai Hireappa Sampagani, a 60-year old widow in Karnataka's Itagi village. She makes just 30 rupees (76 cents) a day in the fields, but still managed to buy an Oorja stove last October. "It's not like it was a luxury. It was a necessity for me," she insists. Heavy smoke was bothering her eyes, and she couldn't stand the long walk to collect wood, especially during the rainy season.

Wedged between the mud-packed walls of her narrow kitchen, Sampagani voices a common complaint. "When you don't have enough food to eat, where will you get the money for gas?" she asks, a basic question for housewives all over the developing world. Efforts to devise and refine local solutions like Oorja are essential to easing the painful daily struggle for affordable energy and emission control.

Margot Cohen is a journalist based in Bangalore.