Contributing to health, the environment, and gender equality with clean cookstovesOver 800 million people in India cook over open fires or on traditional clay stoves called chulhas. As this method of cooking produces heavy smoke, it has serious health impacts and leads to respiratory and other diseases that cause about 1 million premature deaths every year in India alone.
Our carbon offset project aims to replace chulhas in the Indian state of Karnataka with clean and efficient cookstoves that reduce smoke by 70 percent. These efficient cookstoves also save two-thirds of the fuel needed – usually collected firewood – and thus make a valuable contribution to climate action by saving around 200,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Efficient cookstoves also contribute to gender equality: Women are usually responsible for cooking and collecting firewood, so traditional chulhas and the associated smoke are one of the biggest health hazards for women and children. Efficient cookstoves save productive time that can be invested in education or additional income.
How improved cookstoves contribute to climate actionAccording to a statistic from the World Health Organization (WHO, 2022) around a third of the global population still relies on unsafe and environmentally harmful cooking methods. This includes, for example, cooking over open fires or using polluting cooking fuels, such as coal or kerosene. Improved cookstoves tackle this problem by using thermal energy more efficiently. Depending on the model, an improved cookstove can reduce fuel consumption by up to 70 percent, which significantly saves CO2 emissions and can lower the pressure on local forests as less firewood needs to be harvested.
Improved cookstove projects allow the distribution of the - often simple - devices made from metal or clay to households, small enterprises or community facilities. Especially for households, this has an impact beyond the CO2 reduction: better indoor air quality decreases respiratory diseases and families can save time and money as less fuel is needed. Improved cookstoves projects in the ClimatePartner portfolio are registered with international standards.
