TOYOLA Clean Cookstoves
Decreased deforestation through
efficient cooking stoves
all regions, Ghana*
This energy efficiency project in Ghana will replace conventional cooking stoves with much more efficient stoves, the Toyola Coalpots. Households cooking with the new stoves reduce their fuel needs by about 30% per year. That corresponds to a value of 80 euros. The average annual income in Ghana is 250 euros per person.
Particularly needy households can buy the ovens on credit. The payments are made from the savings made for the purchase of fuel.
Toyola Energy employs 170 people involved in the production of ovens and many more for sales.
In addition to the fuel savings, another positive factor in this project is the reduction of air pollution due to the significantly lower pollutant emissions. This goes hand in hand with improving the health of the Ghanaians. The WHO estimates that more than 16,000 people still die prematurely from upper respiratory tract and cardiovascular diseases due to air pollution from cooking zones.
Less charcoal than fuel means less deforested forests! This in turn has positive effects on the protective functions of the forest, such as soil erosion, water conservation and securing the natural habitats of animals and plants.
The strongest impacts of climate change are affecting the poor rural population
With our PROJECT TOGO carbon offset project, we also have interfaces with the direct neighboring country in western Togo, Ghana. As the first independent African country, Ghana was considered a prime example for many years, which has long since found some stability. New skyscrapers in Accra, the capital, a particularly beautiful National Theater, shopping centers that are springing up like mushrooms, SUVs jamming on the streets. For a long time, Ghana's economy has been growing rapidly and now it is stalling.
On the other hand, Ghana faces major problems in many areas. Although Ghana regularly struggles with power cuts, it exports much of it to neighboring African countries, as well as to Togo. Heavily polluted water, not only in rural areas, but also in the actually so far developed capital. But the problems are taken in hand by the newly elected president. A newly founded Ministry for Water and Cleanliness has been created and new attempts to purify wastewater are being made.
The country has a very low percentage of global CO2 emissions. Ghanaians emit around 700 kg of climate-damaging greenhouse gases per year and per capita. Nevertheless, the effects of climate change are huge and extremely palpable.
Inland, the water levels of the lakes sink strongly. Particularly devastating is the gigantic evaporation due to global warming, the most important reservoir for energy production, the Volta Lake. This results in a severe energy crisis that goes hand in hand with the many blackouts. Not only the population suffers from blackouts, think of the hospitals, for example. The economy is also suffering.
While inland water levels of the lakes are sinking, sea level rises on the Ghanaian Atlantic coast. For some time, the houses in the fishing villages on the coast are partly in the sand, which is washed up by powerful waves that come dangerously close to the houses again and again.
Knowing that the Ghanaian government would have to make much greater efforts in climate change, our projects seek to support and promote rural areas.