DENVER—Pollution from indoor cook fires kills 1.5 million people a year in developing countries, health officials say, but new, cleaner-burning stoves being designed in Colorado could help change that.
Envirofit, a nonprofit corporation with close ties to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, has been picked by the London-based Shell Foundation to help it sell 10 million safer stoves in five countries over the next five years.
The World Health Organization says more than 3 billion people—half of the world’s population—depend on unsafe stoves for their daily meals. WHO says indoor air pollution linked to cook stoves causes pneumonia, chronic respiratory disease and lung cancer. Many of the victims are women who spend hours each day cooking for their families, as well as the young children they care for.
Although many families who use the stoves survive on just a few dollars a day, the Shell Foundation project won’t be operated like a charity. The foundation, an independent charity formed by the energy giant Shell Group, said Tuesday that Envirofit was chosen to develop, market and distribute the stoves partly because of its commitment to using traditional market research and testing.
Nathan Lorenz, Envirofit’s vice president of engineering, said the stoves will use the same fuels currently used—dung, wood, crop waste and coal—but the shape of their combustion chambers will burn the fuel more completely, reducing pollutants and cutting down on the amount of fuel used.
“With a pretty simple product you can make a huge impact,” he said.
Envirofit, founded in 2003 with funding from heiress Pat Stryker’s Bohemian Foundation, will work with CSU’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory to develop the stoves. It will use market research already done by Shell to tailor them to the needs of its customers.
Lorenz said different models of the stove will accommodate cultures where the cooks sit or squat and others where they stand.
Models targeted at south Asian customers could have room for a single pot to boil water. Those intended for Latin America could have room for making tortillas. Lorenz said Envirofit also wants to make sure the stoves are attractive and well-made so people will be proud to have them in their homes.
Envirofit plans to begin manufacturing the stoves—in a range of colors—next year. The work is being funded with a $25 million, five-year grant from Shell but the goal is to make the project self-sustaining.
It’s not known yet how much the stoves will cost. Jaime Whitlock, Envirofit’s program coordinator, said Envirofit will work to line up microfinancing to help people buy them. In addition, Envirofit could also raise money by selling carbon credits for the more efficient stoves to people in the developed world to raise money.
Shell Foundation spokesman Simon Bishop said the problem of indoor air pollution is so large it can’t be solved by just non-governmental organizations operating alone. He said some previous efforts to give away stoves sputtered partly because the stoves weren’t suited to people’s needs or because they were discarded after they broke down. He said the stoves would be sold through local distributors who would also be able to repair the stoves and sell spare parts. He said they would work with local women’s groups to market the stoves, showing people how much faster they cook their food and that they can spend less time gathering fuel.
The stoves will first be sold in India, which accounts for about half of the anticipated demand for them, Lorenz said. Other countries being considered include Kenya, Uganda and Brazil.
Envirofit has also been working to reduce pollution in the Philippines by selling kits to tricycle taxi drivers to retrofit their two-stroke engines.
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