This activity is designed to empower women to combat indoor air pollution and counter greenhouse gas emissions by supporting energy efficient cook-stove designs by three promising grass-root innovators from southern India.
Fast facts:
The problem
In developing countries like India, a majority of households burn biomass for cooking and heating. According to the World Health Organization, poor indoor air quality kills nearly half a million people in India every year. This disproportionately affects women, while significantly contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. But many women don’t have access to improved cook stoves, and even if they do, they often are not able to properly use or maintain them.
The solution
This project supports cook stove innovation by selecting three promising energy-efficient stove designs by innovators based out of the Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu states of southern India. These cook stoves were selected for their technology, price, innovator profile, potential for replication/scale, current field-testing status, and most importantly for the benefits they can provide to women and the potential for combating indoor air pollution. The goal of the activity is to financially support technical enhancements for the three selected stoves and anchor improved innovations for them within appropriate scale-up networks.
Helping the planet
The use of improved cook stoves reduces the amount of wood used for fuel, decreasing deforestation. Since the fuel in improved cook stoves is also burned more efficiently, this also results in less emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
Helping people
Better and efficient cook stove technologies made available through the success of this project would empower women to combat indoor air pollution. Spread of innovative cook stove technologies would also bolster bottom-of-the-pyramid markets for access to energy.
Scaling up
With sufficient capital support, cook stove innovators could go on to start social enterprises or license their technologies to mass-produce cook stoves in India. Minor context modifications and/or innovation licensing offer the promise of both horizontal and vertical scale-up and diffusion.
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