Quantitative Guidance for Stove Usage and Performance to Achieve Health and Environmental Targets. Env Health Perspec, March 2015.
Authors: Michael A. Johnson and Ranyee A. Chiang
Background: Displacing the use of polluting and inefficient cookstoves in developing countries is necessary to achieve the potential health and environmental benefits sought through clean cooking solutions. Yet little quantitative context has been provided on how much displacement of traditional technologies is needed to achieve targets for household air pollutant concentrations or fuel savings.
Objectives: This paper provides instructive guidance on the usage of cooking technologies required to achieve health and environmental improvements.
Methods: We evaluate different scenarios of displacement of traditional stoves with use of higher performing technologies. The air quality and fuel consumption impacts were estimated for these scenarios using a single zone box model of indoor air quality and ratios of thermal efficiency. Results: Stove performance and usage must be considered together, as lower performing stoves can result in similar or greater fuel savings than a higher performing stove if the lower performing stove has considerably higher displacement of the baseline stove. Similarly, based on the indoor air quality model, there are multiple performance-usage scenarios for achieving modest indoor air quality improvements. To meet World Health Organization targets, three-stone-fire and basic charcoal stove usage must be nearly eliminated to achieve the particulate matter target (<1-3 hours per week), and substantially limited to meet the carbon monoxide (<7-9 hours per week).
Conclusions: Moderate health gains may be achieved with various performance-usage scenarios. The greatest benefits are estimated to be achieved by near complete displacement of traditional stoves with clean technologies, emphasizing the need to shift in the long term to near exclusive use of clean fuels and stoves. The performance-usage scenarios are also provided as a tool to guide technology selection and prioritize behavior change opportunities to maximize impact.
