GTZ HERA Household Energy Programme - News from Boiling Point 52 - December 2006

Boiling Point
Issue 52 (2006) Health, safety and household energy
Article	GTZ HERA convened the African ‘stove community’ for a second meeting on Household Energy
Author	Marlis Kees

[top] [end]GTZ HERA convened the African ‘stove community’ for a second meeting on Household Energy

In early 2006 the second meeting initiated by the GTZ Household Energy Programme (HERA) was held in Johannesburg, South Africa. Representatives of all fourteen GTZsupported household energy projects in Africa met with GTZ HERA and the team from the GTZ programme Energising Development (EnDev) – (Figure 1). The EnDev team used this opportunity to present the main objectives of their programme and to exchange experiences with the other projects. The main subjects of the meeting were:

the different successful ‘scaling up approaches’, which allow ongoing projects to support mass

the monitoring system set up by EnDev and HERA.

Jointly the projects, HERA and the EnDev team brought together lessons learnt from their work, and developed further steps for scaling up of stove dissemination and for monitoring.

The EnDev programme aims to supply 3.4 million people world-wide with sustainable and modern energy within the next three years. For household energy the term ‘modern energy’ is defined as a reduction of the consumption of fuel and resulting purchase costs and/or time for fuel wood gathering by approximately 50%. Also indoor air quality should be significantly improved. Within this programme, not only cooking energy used by households is considered, but also large scale cooking in social institutions (e.g. schools, hospitals and prisons), as well as providing process energy in small and medium scale enterprises (e.g. bakeries and tobacco curing). In addition, all energy saving devices disseminated by the programme must be produced on a sustainable basis.

Figure 1: Delegates at the meeting in SouthAfrica (photo: GTZ)

To achieve this goal, 20 million Euro is being provided by the Dutch Directorate for International Co-operation (DGIS) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ). Since the programme focuses on the number of people served with household energy – instead of stoves disseminated – a new monitoring system was required, which was presented and discussed by the projects.

Scaling up of stove dissemination was another main area of the workshop. Three successful approaches from Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi were discussed and analysed for common features.

In Ethiopia the project uses a commercial approach to reach mainly urban households. It started with the selection of an appropriate technology (MIRT stove). Stove producers were identified and selected according to specific criteria by the project and local government officers. After training the stove producers acted as independent entrepreneurs. They were only supported by an intensive promotion campaign at all levels (mass media, sensitization campaigns, flyers, leaflets, development of a logo etc.) which created a wide-spread public awareness and also set high quality standards for the stoves. In addition, to stimulate the market, the project promotes the stoves with coupons handled by micro-finance institutions. Certification of trained producers by the project has created new employment and increased income generation. The current state of dissemination of stoves can easily be followed by a highly effective monitoring system developed by the project.

By contrast, Uganda’s scaling up approach concentrates on rural households. This requires more decentralised production using local materials as well as a stronger co-operation with NGOs. Again, stove producers were carefully selected. A training of trainers approach involving NGOs created a highly efficient growth system. Taking advantage of the effect where each trainer trains several others, this approach led to a high coverage rate in a short period of time. Like in Ethiopia, the stove producers act independently after training. They can achieve a profit up to 15Euro per stove, however, prices are negotiable and occasionally stoves are produced for free if the family is very poor, thus also reaching the poorest households. The costs of stoves are kept to a minimum by involving the family in its construction. The quality of work is assured by a rigorous monitoring system; whereby producers who do not match up to the quality required are re-trained and are replaced if they do not improve the quality of their stoves. The results are impressive: over 100,000 mud rocket stoves, 1,000 metal rocket household stoves and 200 institutional stoves have been disseminated by the project within one year.

Like Uganda, the Malawi project targets low income rural households and its approach also includes decentralised production using local material. The technologies range from clay stoves disseminated in rural areas at a very low price, to rocket stoves used by households, social institutions and small enterprises at a higher price. During the course of the project, training of stove producers, monitoring and quality control were gradually taken over by the partner institutions. For scaling up, the project uses a mainstreaming approach. Partners for mainstreaming are food security projects,health and environmental programmes,school feeding and other relief programmes. Recently, tea estates and tobacco companies have become important partners.

A comparison of approaches revealed that the following factors appear to be important for successful scaling up:

reliable partners
selected and qualified producers
a set of qualified trainers and manuals
strict monitoring and quality control
promotion and establishment of a good product image

All projects pursued a strict commercial approach involving the private sector.

To improve knowledge exchange between the different household energy projects, a specific tool, the ‘Knowledge and Innovation Matrix’ was developed by the participants to facilitate exchange of ideas and experiences. This exchange will be coordinated by HERA.

In addition, a new monitoring system tailored to the requirements of DGIS, was established and applied by the projects for the first time. Since sustainable access is the main goal of EnDev, the participants developed indicators for monitoring sustainability and impacts of commercial approaches for stove dissemination.

For further information please contact the GTZ HERA programme: Dr. Marlis Kees: marlis.kees@... or Verena Brinkmann: verena.brinkmann@...

Boiling Point
Issue 52 (2006) Health, safety and household energy
Article	The Inkawasi Stove: A Success Story in the Peruvian Andes
Author	Agnes Klingshirn

[top] [end]The Inkawasi Stove: A Success Story in the Peruvian Andes

Ayamachay is a typical indigenous community of the Sierra Lambayecana in northern Peru. The scattered community of 60 houses lives at an altitude between 2600m and 3200m in the Andes Mountains. The Quechua speaking inhabitants earn a living mainly from agriculture. While the men are working in the fields, the women, besides helping the men, take care of the household and the children. More than half the households have children less than five years of age.

In 1999, GTZ and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) were initiating an environmental health project to improve access to, and quality of, potable water, latrines and sanitary education in Ayamachay.

Very soon they were confronted with another problem, which had not previously been considered; that of indoor smoke from cooking. Carrying out a survey among women about their practices of water boiling and sanitation, the interviewers themselves could not stand the smoky kitchens for more than a few minutes.

Exposed to thick smoke, women and young children spend five hours daily in the kitchen, which has a serious impact on their health. In the Inkawasi district, where Ayamachay is located, acute respiratory infections (ARI) are the most common illnesses. The causal connection with indoor smoke has been proved in many studies.

As a result, GTZ and PAHO decided to include improved stoves in their project, with the objectives of reducing smoke, saving fuelwood, and increasing the likelihood of people boiling water for drinking.

[top] [end]Background: The use of biomass energy in Peru

In Peru, almost 40% of the population rely on biomass, mostly fuelwood, agricultural residues and dung, for cooking. Most of these nine million people live in conditions of poverty and extreme poverty in rural areas, and the majority of them are indigenous. Especially in the Andes, the kitchens have only small windows and almost no air circulation due to the climate. Because of the inefficient burning of biomass, the levels of indoor air contamination recommended by WHO are often far exceeded. Hence, respiratory infections are quite common among poor and rural people.

Figure 1: Ayamachay community landscape, northern Peru (photo: GTZ)

[top] [end]The Inkawasi stove

Working with the local population, four prototypes of improved stoves were developed, tested and evaluated in order to get the best solution. Each of these stoves was compared with the traditional three-stones-fire with regard to fuelwood consumption, smoke emissions and cooking time. The new stove ‘Cocina Inkawasi’ proved to be the best both in these tests and in user satisfaction, and therefore was chosen by the villagers to be installed and disseminated.

The stove is inspired by the rocket elbow stoves of the Aprovecho Institute and is characterized by an adobe stove-body, concrete platforms and two sunken potholes that allow the two pots to be placed inside the recess. While the first pot has direct contact with the fire, the second pot is heated by the gases and the remaining heat. The second pot is usually used to heat up water for drinking and personal hygiene. Reducing rings can be used for different sized pots.

Table 1: Characteristics of various stove models in the village of Ayamachay– Inkawasi

The air in the kitchen is improved due to the Inkawasi’s construction technology, which provides efficient combustion and evacuates the dangerous emissions via the chimney. It is mainly built from local materials such as adobe and clay; however there are some metallic components, e.g. the chimney. (The Peruvian Andes being a prone to earth tremors, a metal chimney was preferred over an adobe one.)

Figure 2: Inkawasi stove (measurements in metres) (image taken from publication cited in reference)

[top] [end]Overwhelming outcome

In 2004, an indoor air pollution and health monitoring indicated reductions of over 80% in indoor carbon monoxide and small smoke particles compared to the traditional fire. Decreases were also measured in the symptoms of respiratory illnesses among persons under 30 years of age. During the study period, the number of persons affected by cough and phlegm over a prolonged period of time fell by nearly two-thirds in the households with the Inkawasi stove. Those suffering from pneumonia were reported to have eight times less among the persons who used the new Inkawasi stove (GTZ-PAHO/WHO).

The success of the Inkawasi stove is proved as well by its high acceptance, considering the demand-driven approach: 90% of the households in Ayamachay are now using the improved stove.

[top] [end]Conclusions

Studies carried out by the Caetano Heredia University in Peruvian districts, have measured direct correlations between respiratory infections and the years of exposure to smoke from traditional fires. Usually it is the women who are affected most: particularly the older women who have been exposed to this indoor air pollution the longest suffer from respiratory illnesses such as bronchitis, cough and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. These findings suggest that the risk of developing a chronic bronchitis later in life is connected with the exposure to smoke from biomass burning during childhood. Infants under 5 years often are affected by acute respiratory infections that are responsible for almost 20% of all deaths in this age group.

[top] [end]Reference

GTZ – PAHO/WHO: Improved cookstoves as a Key Intervention to Enhance Environmental

Boiling Point
Issue 52 (2006) Health, safety and household energy
Article	Mass dissemination of Rocket Lorena stoves in Uganda
Author	Rosette Komuhangi

[top] [end]Mass dissemination of Rocket Lorena stoves in Uganda

A combination of strategic planning and enthusiastic beneficiaries can yield great results. In Bushenyi district in Western Uganda, over 110 000 Rocket Lorena stoves were built in just twelve months. Over 20 000 have so far been built in Rakai where the construction phase started three months ago.

[top] [end]A serious problem

Firewood scarcity is a severe constraint in Western Uganda just like it is in the rest of rural Uganda. The land available is not enough for settlement, save for subsistence farming. Small plots of trees are privately owned. Wood scarcity has had big implications on the health of women. It ranges from back problems due to carrying heavy loads to risks of rape, beating, injury and snakebites.

Malnutrition is evidently on the increase as nutritious but dry-preserved foods like beans and peas are avoided because they require a lot of energy for cooking. A single meal a day is a common thing in many homes. ‘We walk over 20 km in search of wood,’ says Jane K., a mother of eight children. She owns one acre of land. ‘I would have loved to plant trees where I could harvest firewood but it is not possible. The land is too small for trees and my subsistence.’

Women and children are exposed for up to seven hours a day to pollution concentrations above accepted safety levels.

[top] [end]The solution

Figure 1: Locally available stove materials can be used (photo: GTZ)

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development, with the support of the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) through the Energy Advisory Project (EAP), has partnered with community based NGOs and the private sector to promote the improved Rocket Stoves for households and institutions. The rocket stoves for households have been modified to fit the socio-economic setting of the poor by using locally available materials that can be obtained cheaply or even without a cost (Figure 1). Such materials include clay mixed with grass, ant-hill soil and sawdust.

[top] [end]The technology

During a water boiling test, it was proved that the Rocket Lorena Stoves are 30% more efficient compared to the traditional open three-stone fire stove, which has an efficiency of merely 15.6%. The improved Lorena stove thus saves 50–70% of energy compared to the traditional three-stone fire. This is possible because of the shape of the combustion chamber that is specially designed to ensure correct fuel-air mixture and properly insulated to minimize heat loss, hence maximizing the temperature of the combustion chamber (See Boiling Point 47, page 36). These improvements result into a high combustion efficiency and an almost smokeless burning. Further, the stove design ensures that the pot sits right inside the shielded fire chamber, hence maximizing heat transfer efficiency. The combined effect of complete burning and good heat transfer make the Rocket Lorena a highly fuel saving stove.

The strategy In the dissemination of the improved Rocket Lorena stoves, GTZ has followed a ‘pyramid’ strategy that starts with a few coordinators at the top and ends up with hundreds of stove builders at the village level (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Pyramid strategy

In this strategy, the EAP builds the capacity of an NGO in a chosen district so they can technically and administratively manage the program. The NGO appoints a number of district coordinators for the scaling up dissemination process. Since the district is divided into sub-counties, the NGO staff likewise build the capacity of selected sub-county stove coordinators. Given that a sub-county is divided into many parishes, selected potential stove builders from every village are trained at parish level by visiting trainers. Every parish is given a proven artisan to train the potential stove builders. This parish coordinator also ensures that the stove builders are organized into operational groups that can disseminate stoves. The sub-county coordinator is responsible for selection of trainees organizing the training in every parish in the subcounty. He also gives them secondary training that perfects their skills. This strategy has gone through several modifications to become what it is. Though it may not be replicated in every area, it can still be modified to suit most of the districts in the country and it is currently one of the most successful innovative schemes ever designed in Uganda.

[top] [end]Sustainability

The approach could be classified as ‘semi-commercial’. One success of stove dissemination in Uganda was the integration of non-commercial incentives like, for instance, the positive image in the community. A big part of the programme was based on voluntary contributions. In the meantime stove construction has become a common ‘skill’ of many villagers comparable to the construction of houses, in other words, knowledge that can be passed on to the next generation. The large number of trained stove producers and – perhaps more important than anything else – the satisfaction of the users with the new stoves (Figure 3), assures the sustainability of the approach.

Figure 3: Satisfied cook tending her new stove (photo: GTZ)

[top] [end]Beneficiaries

Residents and commercial artisans have already been trained in the production and use of Rocket Lorena technologies in the wood-scarce districts of Rakai, Kanungu, Mbale, Kabale, Masindi, Kampala and Bushenyi. The low-cost design of the stoves makes them affordable even for the poorer households in these areas. During the next few months, the EAP will extend the large-scale dissemination to additional districts of the country, thus allowing an even larger share of the Ugandan population to benefit from the advantages of the Rocket Lorena stove.

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GTZ HERA Household Energy Programme edited by Agnes Klingshirn (779 KB)

[top] [end]Contents: Boiling Point 52 - Health, safety and household energy

Theme editorial: Household energy for life - Update on the health and climate impacts of household solid fuels - Spreading innovative biomass stove technologies through China and beyond - Pollution factors affecting health and safety in rural Zimbabwe - Protecting children from indoor air pollution exposure through outdoor cooking in rural South Africa - Direct contact hazards of cookstoves - Burns, cuts, and scalds - Introducing alcohol stoves to refugee communities - GTZ News BP52 - Household energy, indoor air pollution and health at the 14th session - The effect of ventilation on carbon monoxide and particulate levels in a test kitchen - Methanol stoves for indoor air pollution reduction in Delta State Nigeria - Solar cooking and health - Fuel briquettes from wastes - Charcoal making from agricultural residues - What's happening in household energy BP52? – Energy News From Practical Action BP52

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