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No one’s life should be limited by how they cook. Yet globally, three billion people depend on polluting open fires and inefficient stoves to cook their food, harming health, livelihoods, and the environment. Women and girls, who often spend hours cooking and collecting fuels, are disproportionately affected.

----   Clean Cooking Alliance



  1. 2001-01-01 There are many variations of sawdust cookstoves that have been used for many years both in North America and around the world. This sawdust cookstove model provides a low-cost, low-input method for producing a high intensity flame that will burn for up to five hours. The flame burns fairly clean...
  2. Key Resource 2016-02-05 Until recently, firewood was taken for granted in northern Thailand. With vast forests full of many types of trees, upland households could afford to be choosy concerning the wood they used for cooking. However, in recent years, more and more communities are facing restricted access to forest...
  3. Key Resource 2000-01-01 Briquettes made from materials that cost little or no money to obtain, such as old newspaper or unutilized plant waste, can be a cost-effective alternate fuel to charcoal or firewood. This could alleviate the harsh pressures put on many forests for providing enough fuel energy to meet people’s...
  4. 2005-07-20 Feedback from the ECHO networking with information on cookstoves and indoor pollution.
  5. 2019-11-21 Emily Kinzer Covenant College, Care of Creation Kenya Research conducted by Care of Creation Kenya (CCK) among women in Kijabe, Kenya concluded that using inefficient and open cookstoves resulted in adverse health effects for the entire family, safety hazards while cooking in the kitchen and...
  6. This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 37. One of the great challenges of sustainable agriculture is the sourcing of adequate and affordable organic (carbon based) resources that can be used on-farm for the production of food and feed. Utilizing composts, manures, mulches, and other organic inputs...
  7. This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 32. In many developing world households, meeting the daily energy needs required for cooking is burdensome and costly. Fortunately, low-cost cooking methods that require less fuel while burning more cleanly and efficiently are becoming available at the...
  8. This article is from ECHO Asia Note # 32. In many developing world households, meeting the daily energy needs required for cooking is burdensome and costly. Fortunately, low-cost cooking methods that require less fuel while burning more cleanly and efficiently are becoming available at the...
  9. Creole Document on Making a Cookstove
  10. 1981-12-19 I recently saw a very tall sorghum being grown in Haiti and was told that they pile the stalks together after the harvest and burn them. This is in a country where there is a severe shortage of fuel for cooking. Upon my return to the U.S. I spoke with Dr. Axtell at Purdue University. He told me...
  11. 2004-10-20 Smoke from open fires can be a nuisance, and it can also lead to severe health problems. The Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) has issued a document called “Smoke—the Killer in the Kitchen” that shares statistics on indoor air pollution caused by burning solid fuels like wood,...
  12. 1995-06-19 Sawdust cookers (or cookstoves) burn sawdust, wood shavings, rice hulls, or similar materials, producing a moderate heat for an extended time.
  13. 1981-12-19 This is a question we have been asking for some time. The idea is to prepare pellets using an appropriate technology pelletizer, using waste biomass or charcoal made from it. We do not have much to report at this time except that an engineer has designed and is making a simple pelletizer for us....
  14. Energy consumption is continuously increasing along with the increase in population and economy level of society. The condition is aggravated with the imbalances of energy supply. An alternative energy source that cheap and renewable can be one of energy diversification solution to overcome the...
  15. Check out the new Down Feed Rocket stove in action. Avideoshows how just 4 small sticks can generate lots of heat. The downfeed adapter increases air velocity and reduces the amount of time needed to tend the fire. This stove can be easily built by local villagers for about $3.
  16. To counter the adverse impacts of poor energy use, institutions and individuals have resorted to creating energy-saving technologies –modern energy-saving cooking stoves, fuel-saving jikos, improved firewood cooking stoves, the fireless cooker, and solar energy technologies. These energy...
  17. This publication is part of a continuing attempt by the Regional Wood Energy Programme for Africa to document the activities of stove programmes in the east and southern African region.
  18. Abstract, World Agroforestry, 2014 Many rural households in developing countries feed their animals on the leaves of trees. In pastoral areas of sub-Saharan Africa, three-quarters of the 10,000 tree and woody species, are used as fodder, supplying up to 50 per cent of livestock feed. This...
  19. Abstract, World Future Council, 2016 Across the world, 3 billion people rely on traditional biomass fuels, such as firewood, charcoal or animal dung to meet their energy needs for cooking, causing serious adverse consequences for the environment, health, and economic development of the...
  20. Danny Blank Extending the Growing Season, Nation-2-Nation, 2012 Danny Blank teaches tropical farmers how to take advantage of their climate to have year-round food production. With many helpful photos and illustrations, Blank lays out numerous strategies to dramatically increase the food supply...
  21. The Aprovecho Research Center is actively involved in research, design, manufacturing and testing of biomass cookstoves The ARC staff specializes in improving stove performance. Over 100 stove projects around the world are disseminating stoves designed with help from ARC. Dr. Winiarski, Technical...
  22. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership hosted by the UN Foundation to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. The Alliance’s 100 by ‘20...
  23. 1980-10-01 Our purpose in this manual is to emphasize not so much construction methods for specific stove models, but the whole complex question of how we can help poor people develop solutions to their problems, focussing on cookstoves. This requires an understanding of deforestation, declining crop...
  24. Sub-Saharan Africa continues to suffer from a major energy deficit, with hundreds of millions of people lacking access to electricity and clean cooking fuels. There is a great need for innovative mechanisms that can help families access clean and affordable energy.The Carbon Initiative for...
  25. Sun Buckets is a for-profit social business that develops portable cookstoves that store the sun's energy, making cooking easier and more affordable for off-grid families around the world. For more than 3 billion people on our planet, cooking dinner is not as easy as turning the dial on a gas or...
  26. This handbook presents insights and methodologies from recent biomass cookstove R&D programs at multiple institutions to achieve higher performance, lower cost, and improved usability. This handbook will help cookstove designers and enterprises to integrate the latest R&D innovations into...
  27. Lorena stoves are low-cost, fuel-saving cookstoves, made of sand and clay. This book discusses the design of effieint, locally appropriate Lorena stoves, with examples from Guatemala, Indonesia, Senegal and the United States. It shows how to find and test soils, how to make lorena mix, and how to...
  28. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is a public-private partnership hosted by the UN Foundation to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and protect the environment by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions. The Alliance’s 100 by ‘20...
  29. 1978-01-01 The focal point of this study is the pressing need to utilize rice husk as an energy source, especially in the developing countries. It surveys the available processes and equipment for burning rice husk for energy production, mainly inside rice mills, combined, with high grade ash production and...
  30. 1984-01-01 Our purpose in this manual is to emphasise not so much construction methods for specific stove models, but the whole complex question of how we can help poor people develop solutions to their problems, focussing on cookstoves. This requires an understanding of deforestation, declining crop...
  31. Abstract,Environmental Technology, 2013 Access to clean and affordable energy is vital for advancing development objectives, particularly in rural areas of developing countries. There are some three billion people in these regions, however, who lack consistent access to energy and rely on...
  32. This manual on making charcoal using simple technology systems represents another step by FAO to help overcome fuel shortages in the developing world. Sixty percent of all wood taken from the world's forests is believed to be burnt as fuel - either directly or by first converting it into...
  33. 2004-01-01 Over two billion people in developing countries use only traditional biomass -- wood, dung and crop waste -- for their basic energy needs. The pollution from the burning of these fuels for cooking and heating is linked to the deaths of over 1.6 million people each year (more than three people a...
  34. 37 pages, illustrated Shell Foundation, Partnership for Clean Indoor Air
  35. 1983-01-01 The problems of firewood shortages and the promise of firewood plantations were described extensively in the first volume. No less than one-and-a-half billion people in developing countries derive at least 90 percent of their energy requirements from wood and charcoal. Another billion people meet...
  36. Using earth as a shield against oxygen and to insulate the carbonising wood against excessive loss of heat is the oldest system of carbonization and surely goes back to the dawn of history. Even today it is perhaps used to make more charcoal than any other method. It is, therefore, worthy of...
  37. The Tropical Products Institute (TPI), a scientific unit of the Overseas Development Administration, has gained considerable experience in operating transportable metal kilns of various designs both in the U.K. and in many developing countries. The Institute has evolved a kiln design which is...
  38. The carbonization stage may be decisive in charcoal production even though it is not the most expensive one. Unless it is carried out as efficiently as possible, it puts the whole operation of charcoal production at risk since low yields in carbonisation reflect back through the whole chain of...
  39. Abstract, 2014, Clean Cooking Alliance Improving access to affordable and reliable energy services for cooking is essential for developing countries in reducing adverse human health and environmental impacts hitherto caused by burning of traditional biomass. This paper reviews empirical studies...
  40. Properly constructed and operated brick kilns are without doubt one of the most effective methods of charcoal production. They have proved themselves over decades of use to be low in capital cost, moderate in labour requirements and capable of giving surprisingly good yields of quality charcoal...
  41. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (Alliance) has been working to catalog existing cooking technologies and fuels that are available worldwide (traditional and improved), tracking key features of the technologies as well as testing results. Currently there are over 300 stoves in its Clean...
  42. 2013-01-20
  43. Smoke from traditional cookstoves and open fires has been a silent killer in developing countries for far too long. While there are important signs that the sector is at a tipping point, a concerted and coordinated strategy to develop a thriving market for clean cookstoves and fuels is needed to...
  44. Abstract, 2017, World Development In India, efforts to design and diffuse improved cook-stoves began with nationalist organizations in the 1930s; after independence, these efforts were folded into sporadic state-level efforts and then became part of the NGO patchwork of development projects. Very...
  45. 1983-01-19 The household fuels crisis is closely related to traditional UNICEF concerns such as family income, nutrition, and health.
  46. Abstract, 2018,WHO, IEA, GACC, UNDP and World Bank This document is a part of a series of Policy Briefs being developed to support SDG7 review at the UN HighLevel Political Forum to be held in July 2018. The objective is to inform intergovernmental discussions by providing substantive inputs on...
  47. WFP is committed to helping people safely cook the food it delivers by addressing the various risks associated with cooking and access to energy. Cooking on open fires is one of the most serious public health and environmental problems in the world, withindoor air pollution being ranked by the...
  48. 2.7 billion people worldwide rely on traditional uses of solid biomass fuels to meet their daily energy needs, an increase in 38 million over last year (IEA 2014). Traditional means of cooking pose acute and chronic health risks, introduce time burdens on women and children, contribute to...
  49. Because shacks in low-income communities are often very close to each other, when a fire breaks out in one home due to a spill from a cheap paraffin stove, the fire can spread quickly to numerous neighboring shacks. Tasos Callantzis, Ferderick Kruger, and Rudi Snyman formed Arivi to develop a...
  50. Abstract, 2012,The Harvard Environmental Economics Program It is conventional wisdom that it is possible to reduce exposure to indoor air pollution, improve health outcomes, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in the rural areas of developing countries through the adoption of improved cooking...
  51. But “clean” is a nebulous term. Of those 28 million cookstoves, only 8.2 million — the ones that run on electricity or burn liquid fuels including liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), ethanol and biogas — meet the health guidelines for indoor emissions set by the WHO. The vast majority of the stoves...
  52. Abstract, 2015,Southern Agricultural Economics Association’s 2015 Annual Meeting The present paper evaluates the effects of the use of improved cookstoves (ICSs) on household fuel expenditure in Southern Haiti. It takes advantage of the fact that approximately 80 households received ICSs, a novel...
  53. Key Resource 1980-01-01 The problems of firewood shortages and the promise of firewood plantations were described extensively in the first volume. No less than one-and-a-half billion people in developing countries derive at least 90 percent of their energy requirements from wood and charcoal. Another billion people meet...
  54. The Clean Cooking Catalog helps drive the development of international clean cookstove standards, and provides robust monitoring and evaluation information to key stakeholders
  55. Abstract, Xprize, 2011 In 2000, more than 1.6 million deaths worldwide were caused by indoor air pollution (IAP), making it the second largest environmental contributor to poor health. Most developing countries use open fires or dirty solid fuel (wood or coal) burning stoves, which causes IAP and...
  56. The Water Boiling Test (WBT) is a simplified simulation of the cooking process. It is intended to measure how efficiently a stove uses fuel to heat water in a cooking pot and the quantity of emissions produced while cooking.

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