An experiment by the University of Pennsylvania and Chicago Booth conducted on Nairobi residents over the past 3 and half years has revealed how using highly efficient stoves as opposed to traditional charcoal stoves can not only be beneficial for respiratory health but also help save up to $120 (approximately Kshs15,000) for Kenyans in a year.
Led by Sussana B Berkouwer of the University of Pennsylvania and Chicago Booth’s Joshua Dean, the research revealed that the health risks associated with traditional cooking methods are only one part of a larger picture when it comes to ways that these methods have been derailing the lives of Kenyans.
Berkouwer and Dean's experiment involved offering one set of participants a hefty subsidy to induce them to buy high-efficiency stoves while setting the value high for others. As expected, these participants did not purchase the stoves and thus served as a control group.
“These households spent a huge amount of their money on energy. The stoves retailed for $40 at the time of the study, and the savings were more than $120 during the first year. That return on investment can help people obtain a livelihood,” Dean stated.
Even though the stoves were significantly more expensive than charcoal burners, they ended up yielding more savings compared to those who chose to keep buying charcoal.
They also uncovered that residents in Nairobi spend around 20% of their household income on charcoal for cooking. Their charcoal use however reduced by nearly 50% by adopting the use of high-efficiency stoves thus significantly reducing this figure as well.
Besides the significant saving advantage brought on by using these high-efficiency stoves, the findings also suggested that respiratory symptoms that are associated with spikes in air pollution also significantly reduced for residents who chose to change their cooking methods.
However, clinical health symptoms such as blood pressure which are more closely tied to average levels of pollution exposure were not affected by the switch in cooking methods. These could be attributed to the city’s pollution from sources such as industrial activity, vehicles, and agricultural burning.
“Burning less charcoal does reduce the peaks during cooking, and that’s correlated with reductions in self-recorded diagnoses. But it doesn’t move average pollution exposure at all, partly because these peaks are just not that big a part of the day,” Dean explained.
On a larger scale, switching to high-efficiency stoves not only reduces the amount of unhealthy fumes users inhale but also greatly reduces carbon emissions.
According to the experiment, each high-efficiency cookstove reduces carbon emissions by approximately 3.5 tons per year which is far more cost-effective than many other carbon-abatement technologies.
This would mean that the cost of emissions reduction for the stoves would be about $5 (Approximately Ksh645) per tonne which is significantly low as compared to electric vehicles, for instance, that struggle to break $100 per tonne.
