An Efficient Charcoal Stove for Kenya

Our good friends at Burn Manufacturing were kind enough to share with us this neat video about their new cookstove that cuts charcoal consumption by 45%. Take a look.

The stove’s performance is impressive. What’s equally impressive is the virtually wide open market that exists to improve efficiency and deliver cleaner, more sustainable fuels to 600 million Africans that fuel the $12 billion — yes, that billions with a B! — charcoal market on the continent.

I say wide open market because the focus of the clean cookstove movement has been more on developing improved wood-burning cookstoves, rather than charcoal-burning. There’s a good reason for that: traditional wood-burning cookstoves produce far more toxic emissions than charcoal-burning cookstoves. But the charcoal-burning cookstove market is significantly greater than the wood-burning cookstove market. What’s more, the impact of charcoal on the environment is significantly greater than that of woodfuel. Check out What’s Cooking in East Africa_w_additions. World Bank, a ppt that Burn Manufacturing shared and which which had somehow escaped our attention.

On another note, we apologize for the radio silence of the last few months. But we will be more active in the days and weeks to come!

Your Friendly TCP Team!