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)

RENEW workshop Kigali - presentation materials uploaded

In June, RENEW hosted an energy access practitioner workshop in collaboration with the Royal Embassy of the Netherlands in Kigali. The workshop was attended by over 40 solar and biomass professionals in Rwanda, including entrepreneurs, academics, policymakers, and investors.

Find links to all presentation materials and a workshop summary on our Events page.

Researchers for a low carbon Rwanda

RENEW is not the only international research initiative looking into issues of energy access and low carbon development in Rwanda. We have came across a few related projects from around the world - have a look!

Dartmouth Humanitarian Engineering - Pico-hydro in Rwanda

Imperial College London - e.quinox energy kiosks

MIT's D-Lab - various projects

University of Oxford - Rwandan National Strategy on Climate Change and Low Carbon Development

NURU Light and RENEW in Toronto's Financial Post

Last month Rahul Barua spoke from Kigali to Toronto's Financial Post on renewable energy entrepreneurship in Rwanda, and a groundbreaking BoP venture called NURU Light. NURU delivers a micro-franchising model to address the challenge of off-grid lighting in low income markets. Village-level entrepreneurs are provided "PowerCycles" to charge LED lights; the lights are rented to village residents on a daily basis, and mimic the payments required for micro-purchases of kerosene.

Read the FP article here, and learn more about NURU's innovative approach below.