Last year, Eric Reynolds, the co-founder of the outdoor sports gear company Marmot, contacted me with an aggressive business plan for rolling out fuel-efficient, low-pollution cookstoves across Rwanda. Having seen dozens of entrepreneurial projects in Rwanda start with a big bang and then founder for lack of momentum and commitment, I initially brushed off his enthusiasm. I gently explained that he would have to move to Rwanda if he was to get anything done, and he explained that this was exactly his plan.
Eric Reynolds, co-founder of the outdoor sports gear company Marmot, with the cookstove he created for use in Rwanda.
When Eric rolled into town a few months later and announced that he had decided to, in his words, “spend life here,” I was pleasantly surprised.
Since then, Reynolds has created a for-profit “social business” called “Inyenyeri – A Rwandan Social Benefit Company,” which is the Kinyarwanda word for star and the engine for his extraordinarily ambitious plan to expand clean cookstove use and much more.
Cookstove initiatives are not new to Africa, and I know a bit about them from one of my early projects that aimed to commercialize a rocket stove design made from clay. That design burned wood – about two-thirds less wood than a traditional three-stone fire – and cut emissions by about 70%. It was cutting edge, but never quite caught on: there were challenges in consistent manufacturing, in cultivating sufficient demand, and in addressing the fact that it was hard to put larger pots on the device.
Reynolds’s business plan is based on WorldStove International’s 5-Step Program, which was designed by inventor Nat Mulcahy and establishes locally run and owned stove hubs in developing nations. The 5-Step Program has three core objectives: improving the health of stove users, improving environmental conditions, and creating local jobs – all with a technology that is nothing short of revolutionary: The LuciaStove has a clean blue gas flame, emits virtually zero harmful emissions, and produces biocharresidue, a fine-grained charcoal substance made entirely of carbon that can be used as an organic fertilizer to increase crop yields and food security.
What’s more, the system allegedly produces a carbon-negative form of energy, which (according to Reynolds’s calculations) means that if 40% of the Rwandan population were to use LuciaStoves, the country could become the first carbon-negative economy in the world.
The full engineering details of the LuciaStove are far more complex than I can cover here, but Eric’s plan essentially calls for the creation of a multi-pronged business to gather renewable, mostly agricultural biomass waste (such as banana leaves, elephant grasses, and coffee bean husks) to compress into dense fuel pellets. No trees will be allowed into the pellet recipe; thus, if widely practiced, it will help eliminate the ruinous deforestation in Rwanda and throughout East Africa. The consumers helping to collect the biomass will get fuel pellets for free, while those in urban areas will buy them at a price far below the energy cost of charcoal.
The best part about Eric’s plan is that it includes a carbon credit scheme that may actually pay most consumers to use it. Customers returning the biocharresidue after cooking will receive cash credits into a household savings account, which can then be used to purchase other income-producing tools such as solar LED lights at locally-based agricultural extension “Hub” stores.
As in any startup entrepreneurial project, Eric’s road ahead will not necessarily be smooth, but the alternative is downright gloomy. Nearly 10 million people in Rwanda depend on locally available brush for cooking. Combined with an increasing population (Rwanda is already the most densely populated country in Sub Saharan Africa) and growing household expenses, this is the perfect storm for total deforestation.
What’s more, the search for fuel sources can be an enormous burden: On average, women and girls in developing countries spend up to 20 hours a week searching for fuel. Burning fuels pose major risks to health, and the toxic fumes from open fires can reach 200 times the level that the EPA considers safe to breathe. In Rwanda, 34% of new visits to health centers are due to acute respiratory disease, which is caused in large part by indoor air pollution. Worldwide, indoor air pollution from cooking fires causes twice as many deaths as malaria: According to the World Health Organization, it is responsible for over 1.6 million premature deaths each year – or one death every twenty seconds.
Many might ask if Rwanda will skip technologically advanced home cookstoves altogether and install electric or gas stoves in the years to come. That seems unlikely. As I’ve written previously, even after Rwanda invests hundreds of millions of dollars in electrification efforts, the grid coverage is projected to reach just 35% of the country by 2020. Other nations such as India, China, and Mexico have already successfully adopted national clean cookstove technology programs.
Eric Reynolds and his Inyenyeri team are about to take a running start, bringing with them enormous potential to change the way that Rwandans interact not just with their kitchens, but also with waste, market access, conservation, and health. There are a lot of entrepreneurs out to change the world these days, but perhaps this kind of clean cookstove technology will be the one to transform the future – not just in Rwanda, but wherever the open wood fire is used.
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I hope that this cook stove will accept such fuels as water hyacinth briquettes and pelletized Typha.