Project Summary
Given the high and growing significance of cooking on inefficient open fires to greenhouse gas production globally, and climate risk locally, including agricultural land and watershed degradation, and to human health, well-being, family prosperity and the rural economy, the Government of Zimbabwe has launched a major initiative for clean, efficient cooking technology using sustainable sources of energy for cooking in rural and peri-urban areas.
Government is seeking to eliminate cooking on open fires and switch cooking fuel supply to 100% sustainable woody biomass energy by 2030 in line with its pledge in its NDC to achieve complete conversion to sustainable energy sources by 2030 economy wide. The opportunity to make this energy transition is deployment of modern low-cost rocket stove technology for household cooking and switching from unsustainable large diameter firewood used in open fires to small-diameter renewable twigs and small branch wood and crop residues that are already abundant but burnt as a waste or underutilised for lack of appropriate cooking and combustion technology. The technology and cooking practice change that can support this transition has been successfully demonstrated in Zimbabwe and neighboring countries.
The key elements are:
Locally made bricks and imported or locally made durable metal parts with the stove assembled and maintained by women cooks themselves; Switching from a declining resource of large wood from trees in agricultural land and natural forest to the much larger pool of finger-sized woody biomass ideally suited as a fuel for modern rocket stoves but currently burned or wasted seasonally, such as woody crop residues, or shrubs ignored as unsuitable for sue in open fires;
Encouraging on-farm forestry as woodlots or agroforestry as fast-growing nitrogen fixing or other compatible species to support sustainable climate resilient “conservation farming” and complement supply of annually harvest small diameter rocket stove fuel. As a result we intend on establishing a Cookstove Project that will benefit 2 million households across Zimbabwe.
Technology description
The efficient cookstove is a 5-piece cookstove, it comprises a stable base, brick and mortar frame which has a feeding tunnel and an output section, heat retention component, pot standand a fuel feeding stand which doubles up as the air intake chamber. The cookstove design hasbeen tested and approved by the Zimbabwe Government for the implementation of Efficient
Cookstove projects.
