Energy Policy, Apr 2011
Adoption and sustained use of improved cookstoves
Ilse Ruiz-Mercadoa, Omar Masera, Hilda Zamorac and Kirk R. Smith
The adoption and sustained use of improved cookstoves are critical performance parameters of the cooking system that must be monitored just like the rest of the stove technical requirements to ensure the sustainability of their benefits. No stove program can achieve its goals unless people initially accept the stoves and continue using them on a long-term basis. When a new stove is brought into a household, commonly a stacking of stoves and fuels takes place with each device being used for the cooking practices where it fits best.
Therefore, to better understand the adoption process and assess the impacts of introducing a new stove it is necessary to examine the relative advantages of each device in terms of each of the main cooking practices and available fuels. An emerging generation of sensor-based tools is making possible continuous and objective monitoring of the stove adoption process (from acceptance to sustained use or disadoption), and has enabled its scalability. Such monitoring is also needed for transparent verification in carbon projects and for improved dissemination by strategically targeting the users with the highest adoption potential and the substitution of cooking practices with the highest indoor air pollution or greenhouse gas contributions.
Highlights
- Providing access to improved cookstoves is necessary but not sufficient to achieve any of the goals of stove programs. Sustained use is critical to ensure the sustainability of cookstove benefits.
- The introduction of new fuel/devices is a dynamic process with strong interactions with users and the larger socioeconomic and ecological context.
- More than switching to new cookstoves people stack devices and fuels based on the preferred combinations for the main cooking tasks.
- The adoption process is characterized by: the initial acceptance level, time to reach sustained use, level of sustained use and magnitude of seasonal fluctuations.
- New sensor-based tools have made possible the objective monitoring of these parameters to develop strategies for optimizing them.
