Clean & improved cookstoves in South Sudan

Pilot Project: Subscribe to planned carbon credits from this clean cookstove project that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and toxic fumes in households. (pilot stage project).

What?

Help 500 South Sudan households switch from dirty cooking methods to healthy, greener cooking with a clean and more efficient cookstove.

Why?

Worldwide, over 2 billion people mainly cook with polluting fuels and technologies, including solid fuel and biomass such as firewood, charcoal, animal dung, crop residues, and coal. These fuels release plumes of smoke and soot with significant health impacts that contribute to millions of premature deaths each year. 

The World Health Organisation estimates that about 5,000 people in South Sudan die annually from conditions linked to indoor air pollution – most of which is caused by cooking sources. Traditional cooking practices also produce greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions stem from two sources. First, unsustainable harvesting of fuel drives forest degradation and prevents reforestation. Second, burning fuels during the cooking process emits carbon dioxide, methane, and other pollutants.

Where?

In South Sudan. While clean cookstoves have been introduced to Africa a few decades ago, uptake in Rwanda is low, mostly because they are unaffordable.  

With 99% of the population using dirty cookstoves, the country ranks bottom in Africa.

What is the impact?

With households switching to premium clean cooking the expected benefits are

- Health: well established benefits to the household based on scientific studies on cooking stoves and methods, reducing hospitalizations, respiratory problems and also fewer deaths

- Emissions: based on scientific studies with cookstoves, with people switching from open-fire to clean cookstoves, Carbon emissions into the air from the open fuel burning are reduced. Over the mean lifespan of the stove of over 5 years, this results in substantial improvement in emissions at scale.

- Time-saving: Hours spent gathering wood daily as opposed to buying briquettes typically happens once a week and takes 1 hour.

Which cookstove?

For this pilot we provide households with the Berkeley-Darfur Stove, a product that has been used in other cookstove carbon credit programmes. Households will use 66% less fuel and save 1 hour a day due to faster cooking. 

How does this work?

● Participant selection: To maximise the chances of sustained use of the cookstoves, households currently using firewood on open pits will start with efficient cookstoves still running on wood, and people currently using charcoal should start with a clean cookstove running on charcoal. Cookstove manufactures call this the energy consumption ladder that households climb over the years, eventually switching to biogas fueled cookstoves, electric ones, or running on solar with batteries.

● Pre-financing: Your purchase of carbon credits upfront allows our local partners in Burundi to purchase the cookstoves, find suitable households, and start the impact measuring.

● Not free: studies have shown that people value something more when they had to pay for something than when given it for free. The households are much more likely to use the cookstove longer and maintain it better. The price they pay is 15% of the retail price.

● Value proposition to households: 1) time-saving: The cookstoves reduce time to cook, freeing up time for women and girls; 2) Health: no fumes; 3) At the end of each year we pay you for continued improved cookstove use, $6, which can be used to buy fuel; 4) Heavily discounted price for cookstove.

Beginning of a journey

This is a small scale project that is the beginning of our journey towards clean cooking across Africa and Asia.

*Upcoming Project*- Please get in touch through the contacts and appointments page.