Momentum for Change: Programme to distribute Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) cook stoves and improved biomass cook stoves to low-income households in Peru

Activity area: Mitigation
Website:
Location: nationwide in Peru
Activity established: June 2009

This activity, which encourages low-income households to use cleaner and more efficient cook stoves, is implemented by the Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mining in collaboration with the private sector, with financial support by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The activity involves replacing traditional kerosene and biomass-fired cook stoves with two types of improved cooking stoves: cook stoves that use LPG, a cleaner and more efficient fuel; and improved cook stoves that use biomass efficiently. Both are currently not affordable to low income households.

This programme was created to improve health and quality of life of local inhabitants, promote energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions.

The replacement of the traditional kerosene cook stoves involves the delivery and installation of new equipment to low , together with the training materials. The distribution rate has improved from 50 deliveries a day at the beginning of the implementation of the activity to approximately 200 at the end of the initial phase of development. To date, more than 118,000 households have managed to benefit from the new cook stoves distributed.

This is a nationwide initiative and the cook stoves have been installed throughout the 24 departments in which is the country is divided.

Mitigation / Adaptation

Benefits

Potential for scaling-up and replication

The activity contributes to climate change mitigation through reduction of GHG emissions resulting from:

1) LPG is cleaner and more efficient than traditional cooking fuels. The CO2 emission factor of this fuel is 12% lower than kerosene's CO2 emission factor. New LPG cook stoves are more efficient than kerosene cook stoves due to reduction of heat loss.

2) Improved biomass cook stoves reduce the amount of biomass required in day-to-day cooking by 40 %. This reduces deforestation by minimizing the amount of trees cut down for cooking.

The Peruvian Ministry of Energy and Mines and UNDP have calculated that each LPG cook stove reduces approximately 1.15 tCO2e/year and each improved biomass cook stove installed avoids 2.67 tCO2e/year. Therefore, it is estimated that more than 60,000 tCO2 have been reduced by the use of LPG cook stoves and approximately 170,000 tCO2 by the implementation of improved biomass cook stoves.

Environmental benefits:
-Improvement of local air quality: By replacing residual fuel oil with LPG, the activity reduces not only GHG emissions, but also the emission of other gases with major impacts on air quality, such as CO, NO, NOx or SO2 and particulate;
- Reduction in deforestation: The initiative minimizes deforestation by reducing the amount of trees cut down for cooking.

Social benefits:
- Poverty alleviation: The costs associated with less efficient cooking fuels and inefficient technologies are being reduced.
- Improvement of quality of life: LPG is a clean fuel which reduces health problems such as respiratory diseases associated with common cooking practices;
- Fire risk reduction: The use of improved cook stoves results in a reduced risk of house fires.

Economic benefits:
- Job Creation: The activity promotes decent work opportunities. The distribution of LPG cook stoves and improved biomass cook stoves contributes to the creation of a local market for the manufacture of parts and materials needed for their installation and maintenance. This benefits small and medium industries as well as small local manufacturers;
- Improvement of access to energy: The activity facilitates the affordability and accessibility to clean, cheap and efficient energy sources and technologies. These would have been unaffordable for low income households if the initiative had not been implemented.

The Ministry of Energy and Mines of Peru established in conjunction with the UNDP, distribution targets of 45,000 LPG cook stoves and 65,000 improved biomass cook stoves during the years 2010 and 2011. Once these objectives were met, an additional target to scale up this initiative by distributing more than 210,000 new cook stoves was established for the years 2012 and 2013.

In order to extend the positive impact of this activity to new areas in Peru, the Repsol Foundation decided to carry out the installation of 8,000 new LPG stoves in the first half of 2012, and plans to install 7,500 additional LPG stoves in the second half of 2012. The results of this parallel initiative promoted by the Repsol Foundation are 8,802 additional LPG cook stoves installed.