Most Affordable and Environmentally Friendly Cooking Energy Solution - Bhutan

Dazin has developed a unique business model, which gives impoverished communities access to smokeless gasifying stoves and clean fuel. Dazin’s financing mechanism trains and empowers local communities in Bhutan and generates jobs and profit. Each stove, when compared to open fire cooking and heating, saves four tonnes of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere and eliminates black carbon.

Fast facts:

The combined fuel and stove solution leads to a reduction of four tonnes of carbon emissions per year per stove;
Dazin has already saved 80 tonnes of carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere.

The problem

Globally, 2.9 billion people in developing countries still use traditional fuels such as firewood, charcoal, crop residues and animal dung to make their food on open fires. The smoke from cooking fires accounts for eight deaths every minute globally (which is more than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis deaths combined), impacting mostly women and children. Bhutan is one of the highest firewood consumers per capita in the world.

The solution

Dazin practices an inclusive business model by providing free fuel “cookies” (small and efficient briquettes) and smokeless stoves to rural households in exchange for forestry wood waste. This collected wood waste is densified into fuel cookies in a local factory. Surplus fuel cookies are sold in cities to offset the free services in rural areas and scale impact to new areas. Dazin implemented a pilot project in January 2014. They randomly selected 300 people in the Tsirang region of Bhutan and observed the following results: fuel collection time was reduced by 50%, collection of firewood was reduced by 84%, 1.4 tonnes of fuel cookies were sold in urban areas generating revenue, urban customers saved up to 40% of their income by using smokeless stoves and 160 tonnes of carbon emissions were reduced.

Helping the planet

Dazin’s business model requires 84% less firewood, which contributes to the reduction of deforestation, soil erosion and protects the local ecology. The combined fuel and stove solution leads to carbon emission reduction and eliminates around 98% of black carbon emissions, which is a massive contributor to global climate change.

Helping people

The primary target group is the women and children in the rural areas of Bhutan, who are the main beneficiaries of the project. They are benefited by obtaining smokeless cooking energy (providing good health to their family) while providing 50% less forestry waste than open fire cooking.

Scaling Up

In the short term, Dazin plans to reach 5,000 households. They plan to expand countrywide in Bhutan by partnering with relevant stakeholders and expanding the fuel production/distribution to reach 0.6 million people by 2020. The long-term vision is to widely replicate the innovation outside Bhutan with the aim to directly or indirectly reach 100 million people and to help other organizations replicate the concept in their respective target areas.