Energy Efficiency at the Base of the Pyramid: A System-Based Market Model for Improved Cooking Stove Adoption

Abstract

A widespread dissemination of improved cooking stoves in the developing world can lead to considerable improvement of health, to reduced pressure on natural woody resources and to substantial reductions of emissions contributing to global warming. A number of programs have aimed to achieve such dissemination, while few of the programs have had any large-scale success. It has been suggested that a more commercial approach, as opposed to subsidized or freely distributed stoves, would achieve a higher level of success. However, a majority of the households that would benefit from an improved stove are poor and cannot afford the cost of the stove, especially if no monetary savings are possible from a more efficient fuel use, i.e., if the fuel used is collected biomass. The aim of this paper is to propose and evaluate a model that might overcome some of the barriers previous programs have experienced. The proposed model involves commercialization of collected fuels. The methods for evaluation include a qualitative assessment of the proposed model aided by the literature on improved cooking stove programs, fuel wood collection and fuel switching together with a quantitative simplistic model calculation of a hypothetical application of the proposed model principles, in order to assess its financial feasibility. The assessment indicates that the model would increase both households' incentives and means to purchase and use improved cooking stoves. Furthermore, the model could possibly be partly financed based on carbon credits achieved from the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Drivers and Barriers to Clean Cooking: A Systematic Literature Review from a Consumer Behavior Perspective

“…Since energy poverty and limited clean cooking is largely a concern of developing and emerging countries [28], income seems to have a major role in consumer behavior. There is general agreement that household income represents a driver for the adoption of ICS [10,15,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. Higher-income households adopt sustainable cooking systems more frequently than do lower-income households.…”

“…• ICS price [7,36,39,[43][44][45][46][47]49,50,53,61,72,73,95] The price of ICS can be a barrier because it is relatively very high compared to the purchasing power of lower income communities.…”

“…Environmental impacts [8,11,36,49,57,65,102,103] Households generally show low awareness and low concern about the negative environmental impacts of traditional stoves (e.g., deforestation and pollution).…”

“…Traditional cookstoves have severe negative impacts on the environment in terms of deforestation and pollution; ICS use less biomass, easing stress on local forests that are a common source of fuelwood [36,102,103] and reducing the emission of gases that most exacerbate global warming [11]. While these aspects have been recognized in the literature, consumers' concerns about cookstove characteristics and their environmental effects in a broad sense (i.e., not limited to indoor air pollution) emerged in very few studies [49,57].…”

Household cooking fuel use in rural and peri-urban Viet Nam: A multilevel longitudinal analysis of supply side factors

“…The fuel choices in the RAF census are: wood, coal, gas, electricity and 'other fuels'. 'Other fuels' for cooking relate mainly to crop residues in rural areas (Dollar, Glewwe and Litvack 1998;Vahlne 2015;Vahlne and Ahlgren 2014). Henceforth, we will use the term 'miscellaneous' for 'other fuels'.…”