Modi research group: New York State uses more energy than SSA

The Modi Research Group at Columbia University recently presented an interactive map representing the total annual building energy consumption for New York City. Users can view estimated data available at the block level.

In an interview with Metropolis, Professor Modi pointed out that: “Midtown Manhattan has more energy use than the whole country of Kenya, and New York state uses more energy than all of sub-Saharan Africa.” The research group also works on energy and development, often in collaboration with the Millennium Villages Project.

Business innovation and improved cookstoves

The world of improved cookstoves has become increasingly more interesting with greater technological and business innovation in the sector. The viability of carbon financed activities (both voluntary and compliant) with new rules and programmatic approaches, has drawn greater interest from private sector actors, while advances in cookstove design and manufacturing have made these new implementation models feasible. Below are two examples of innovative approaches we've been excited about:

WorldStove's LuciaStove and INYENYERI

Photo credit: Jonathan Kalan

Manufactured in Italy, at first glance the LuciaStove by WorldStove hardly seems a likely solution for household energy in low income markets. A closer look at the stove and intended implementation models (i.e. WorldStove's Five-Step Program) quickly reveals the potential social, economic, and environmental benefits that the stove can deliver. The stoves are flat-packed and assembled in country, delivering a feature of local job creation. The stoves themselves are pyrolytic, producing a blue cooking flame from the combustion of pelletized local biomass. As an added bonus, the sophistication of the burn process produces biochar - a substance increasingly discussed and researched for its carbon sequestration and fertilization potential. While there are indeed challenges for the stove (such as first cost and local tastes), it is an interesting new look at household energy.

One of the latest deployments of the LuciaStove is underway by INYENYERI, a startup Rwandan social benefit company. A few of us had the good fortune of learning about INYENYERI in great depth from the source - founder Eric Reynolds and marketing director Jean Bosco Musana - on a picturesque shore overlooking Lake Kivu earlier this summer. INYENYERI brings an aggressive and refreshing approach to the household energy challenge, and will piloting a number of varying business models during their market research phase this year. For more information, have a look at profiles by the New York Times and NextBillion, as well as their August newsletter.

The Paradigm Project

The Paradigm Project has a goal of bringing 5 million improved cookstoves to the world by 2020, and is built around a stove that is perhaps more familiar to the broader household energy community - the Rocket stove. Carbon finance is integral to Paradigm's model, allowing them to sell both imported and locally produced versions of the stoves at subsidized prices. While many improved cooking stove projects and enterprises are underway with similar logic, the Paradigm Project is set apart by its first-in-class marketing. Check out the trailer for their self-produced series on stoves and energy poverty, "Stoveman", below, and make sure to visit their website.

Two recommendations for peer-reviewed literature related to this post: 

2011, Shrimali et al, Improved stoves in India: A study of sustainable business models (Energy Policy)

2009, Bailis et al, Arresting the Killer in the Kitchen: The promises and pitfalls of commercializing improved cookstoves (World Development)