Energy Conservation and Solar Energy Use for Cooking - Impact of Its Massive Adoption in the Arid Zone of Argentina

Abstract

The use of solar energy is essential in transforming today's human environments into tomorrow's sustainable human habitats. This paper presents the positive impacts produced by the adoption of energyefficient cooking equipment -using heat retention box cookers and the solar drum ovens -in the arid zone of Argentina. These solar cooking technologies improve the quality of life for local populations and, at the same time, save energy, time and effort in trying to obtain firewood. They minimize serious health problems associated with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions control. The study documented in this paper demonstrates that usage of these technologies results in the saving of 65.7% of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and 63.8% of Firewood (FW) utilized in Argentina's rural and arid zone. These results indicate that, if 50% of the arid zone population were to adopt these technologies, a reduction of 3.09kg CO 2 of greenhouse gases per capita from 2015 to 2050 is possible.