Household Cookstoves, Environment, Health, and Climate Change, 2011. World Bank.
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Developing and deploying the new generation of cookstoves at scale would cover a broad agenda, requiring cooperation among a range of diverse stakeholders on energy access. There is scope to support the technical development and innovation of all stove types under the umbrella of providing clean and affordable household energy to the poor. It would be crucial to have widely accepted standards and testing protocols, as well as active M&E protocols for both the advanced biomass and effective improved cookstoves. The required financial engineering would need to balance loans and grants, taking both cost and affordability into consideration; and the role of climate-finance instruments would need to be further explored.
Scaling up deployment would require learning from other successful programs, including SHSs and water and sanitation interventions, and awareness raising and publicity, along with multiple complementary partnerships among government, the private sector, development partners, and nongovernmental organizations so that all stakeholders perform to their comparative advantage.
Today there is a renewed momentum to promote advanced biomass cookstoves that are affordable and burn fuel cleanly and efficiently. The building blocks appear to be falling into place: advanced biomass cookstoves backed by private-sector interest, new financing models and sources, and a coalition of the willing across stakeholder groups (e.g., the recently formed United Nations Foundation–led GACC, which the World Bank has joined). A point of entry for development institutions like the World Bank is the International Development Association (IDA) 16 consensus on mainstreaming gender and climate change in development assistance.
Furthermore, the provision of clean and affordable household energy is an integral part of scaling up energy access for the poor. The social and economic consequences of reducing the hours women spend collecting biomass fuel, improving their health, and freeing up their time for more beneficial activities might well result in raising the living standards of an entire generation of children and households. Finally, at the global and regional levels, advanced cookstoves could contribute to a reduction in greenhouse gases and other climate forcers attributed to biomass burning.
