Gassifier cookstoves are great. The burn hotter, longer, and cleaner than either wood or charcoal stoves. But, unlike old fashion wood or charcoal stoves, gassifier stoves can be delicate instruments that require a fine calibration of fuel size, content, and oxygen mixtures to work just right. At The Charcoal Project we’re always excited to see new attempts to create value chains that integrate fuels and stoves and deliver value to consumers. For the record, we’re still gung ho on Eric Reynold‘s Inyenyeri gassifier stove project in Rwanda.
In a recent article, Mashable highlighted Emerging Cooking Solutions, a Swedish-Zambian venture that aims to bring better stoves and fuels to the Zambian households. We look forward to learning more about Emerging Cooking Solutions and its business model.
African Startup Converts Waste Into Clean Fuel
By Zoe Fox as published in Mashable.
KITWE, Zambia — A joint Zambian and Swedish venture is looking to curb deforestation by introducing a new type of cookstove, which runs solely on clean fuel, into Zambian households.
Zambia cuts down hundreds of thousands of wooded acres every year, as one of the most aggressive sites of deforestation in the world. According to a recent report, Zambia loses between 600,000 and 750,000 acres of its 125 million acres of forest each year.
One of the major drivers of this deforestation is household cooking on charcoal-burning stoves, used in 80% of households. While electric stoves are making headway among the country’s wealthy, unreliable electricity requires nearly every house to have a charcoal-burning backup, which is both unsafe and detrimental to the environment.
Emerging Cooking Solutions‘ bio-waste pellet-burning stove could eliminate the use of charcoal from kitchens — if it catches on.