Efficient cooking for better living conditionsThe use of open fires and solid fuels for cooking is one of the world’s most pressing health and environmental problems, directly impacting close to half the world’s population and causing nearly 4 million premature deaths each year.
Our project in Kenya tackling both issues by manufacture and distribution the so-called Jikokoa improved cookstoves. The project makes an important contribution to climate change mitigation and at the same time improves living conditions for people throughout Kenya. The efficient cookstoves allow households to save time and money otherwise spent on cooking and fuel acquisition, as well as improving health, nutrition and education conditions. It creates more than 200 local job opportunities and contributes to women empowerment by reducing their workload.
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.
