Traditional stoves: fueling health and climate crises?
Cooking with wood or other biomass is a major source of indoor air pollution in developing countries.Photo: Karan Singh Rathore via GPA Photo Archive
“we are here because of charcoal,” Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced at a meeting in Dar es Salaam on Nov. 1 as she unveiled ambitious new plans to bring the country’s 90% increase in clean energy usage.
Why Charcoal?Because many Tanzanians, along with more than 2.5 billion people worldwidestill rely on collecting charcoal, firewood and other biomass to fuel their stoves or brighten their homes.
President Hassan wants to change that by asking most Tanzanian institutions – any group serving more than 300 people – to switch to cleaner cooking techniques and fuels within 12 months.
But why focus on cooking and why rush?
The impact of cooking on climate and health
According to new data developed food and agriculture organizationexist Food Climate Partnershipthe total emissions from household food consumption are equivalent to 1.3 billion tons annual carbon dioxide. This is about 8% of the total footprint of the global food system – About 16 billion tons – which in turn accounts for nearly a third of total greenhouse gas emissions.
A household’s carbon footprint associated with food consumption is primarily driven by its stove and the fuel used for cooking. with Tanzania, one third 80% of the global population relies on highly polluting fuels such as biomass (wood, charcoal or animal waste) or kerosene for household cooking or lighting needs.
Burning charcoal and these other “dirty” cooking fuels indoors produces soot, particulate matter, and household air pollution that nearly 3.8 million premature deaths and tens of millions of injuries and illnesses every year.
In addition, women and children may spend Up to 20 hours per week collecting firewood and four hours a day Cooking on a traditional stove – opportunity cost may come at the expense of school or work and hobbies.In conflict zones, these long harvested firewood far from home can also Increased risk of gender-based violence and physical attacks. These risks and costs will only increase as forest degradation forces women and children further afield to seek firewood for cooking and heating.
Traditional fuels for home cooking and heating are also responsible more than 50% Global emissions of black carbon, a major indoor air pollutant and transient but powerful greenhouse gas. Direct emissions from various cooking systems and fuels, as well as indirect emissions from biomass harvesting associated with deforestation, also increase the global carbon footprint of household food consumption.
These indirect emissions are difficult to quantify because sustainable harvesting and burning of biomass is sometimes considered carbon neutral In the long run – burning plants and trees releases and releases carbon emissions roughly equal to the amount of carbon that plants initially removed from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. However, if biomass collection exceeds the rate of forest regeneration, it disrupts the balance between carbon sinks and carbon sources and contributes to deforestation and large carbon emissions.
But these emissions from traditional stoves and biomass fuels are unevenly distributed across countries. While the citizens of most industrialized countries have access to clean cooking technologies—advanced electric and propane appliances or high-efficiency wood stoves—only 10 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa have access to these clean cooking alternatives, compared with 36 in East Asia % 56% in Latin America and the Caribbean, According to the World Bank.
People who can’t get clean cooking in 2019.Source: World Health Organization
These significant health and climate impacts of home cooking help explain motivations in countries like Tanzania, where only 5% of the population Aggressive plans to phase out dirty stoves and fuels can be made using cleaner cooking fuels and technologies.
Technology and Policy Solutions
A repository for improved stove technology, Clean Cooking Directorylists more than 500 innovative stove designs – made of metal, ceramic, clay, brick or cement – powered by fuels such as biogas, wood pellets, electricity, solar energy and LPG.
Investment in clean cooking totals tens of millions of dollars and is growing at a CAGR 20% since 2014. At least 53 million Between 2010 and 2015, donors distributed efficient or clean stoves.Total revenue from carbon credit mechanisms 11 million 2020.
There are various technical solutions, Emissions Credit Programand a coordinated donor campaign to facilitate the switch to cleaner cooking – but why are countries like Tanzania still struggling to encourage a large-scale switch to these cleaner, more efficient technologies?
Barriers to Adopting Clean Cooking Solutions
The reality is that despite impressive recent growth, total investment in the clean cooking industry is still well below estimates $10 billion per year Universal by 2030.
But funding shortfalls only explain part of the story — efforts to promote clean cooking fuels face a litany of hurdles to adopting these new technologies. These include:
- Most wood fuel or biomass used for cooking is collect instead of buy, which means that clean stove businesses have difficulty competing with low-cost (or zero-cost) traditional cooking systems.The country’s fuel subsidy The cost of kerosene fuel for cooking is also often kept artificially low in developing countries.
- Even though local markets can provide relatively accessible, low-cost clean cookstoves that provide proven long-term savings, poor households often lack upfront funding Required for initial investment.
- While women and children are the main direct beneficiaries of improved stoves, male heads of household often control household financial decisions and are less likely to invest in new stoves or fuel.
- Families who purchased or received improved stoves may be involved fuel buildup By continuing to use traditional stoves and biomass fuels as well as new equipment.
Lessons from Tanzania and COP27 policymakers
Each of these barriers can and should be mitigated through thoughtful, context-specific policies that foster private sector development and provide targeted subsidies or interventions to poor households who cannot afford transition.
Globally, our reliance on traditional stoves and polluting fuels is huge price: $1.4 trillion in associated health impacts, $800 billion in lost female productivity, and $200 billion in climate impacts.
President Hassan is right to directly link Tanzania’s reliance on charcoal and biomass for cooking to Tanzania’s plans for a cleaner, healthier and more climate-friendly future.
Leaders and policymakers in Sharm el-Sheikh this week should follow Tanzania’s lead in committing to implementing effective policies, scaling up the local clean cooking sector, developing innovative and locally appropriate technologies and fuels, and securing long-term funding, To ensure that the Universal Clean Cooking Channel by 2030.
Benjamin Ritter is a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Kevin Carr is a research assistant at Columbia University Global Energy Policy Centeras a member of the Food Climate Partnership, he focuses on the intersection of food systems and climate change.
This Food Climate Partnership is a coalition of scientists and policy practitioners from the Columbia Center for Climate System Research (CCSR) and the Center for Global Energy Policy (CGEP), the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), and NYU School of Environmental Studies (NYU) . The group supports the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on environment statistics.
