Choropleth plots showing viability scores Grid-eCook. Darker shading indicates most viable country contexts Read more…
All posts by elstove
The opportunity for PV-eCook sits mainly in Africa.
Choropleth plots showing viability scores PV-eCook. Darker shading indicates most viable country contexts.
Commercialised polluting fuels
Size of commercialized polluting fuel (kerosene, charcoal, coal) users market segments and ease of reaching them with Grid-eCook or PV-eCook solutions.
New eCook Global Market Assessment report available.
The aim of the global study is to support a strategic long-term mix of interventions that seek to pre-position research and knowledge such that when the pricing of components and systems reaches viability, donors, investors, the private sector and civil society can take rapidly eCook to scale.
Updated DFID report links
Someone pointed out that the reports on the resources page pointed to the evidence in demand website, and that DFID has now moved them to the .gov.uk site. The links have been updated and we apologise if you couldn’t find them before.
Ainsley encourages energy awareness in UK
Beyond Fire
Beyond Fire, a recently published report by the World Future Council and Hivos (2016) argues that “focusing on improved cook stoves is neither a truly long-term nor a truly sustainable solution to the challenge of cooking.” Their analysis echoes much of our work, indeed they quote from and suggest very similar solutions.
Figure: Comparison of Beyond Fire’s economic modelling results with selected results from Leach & Oduro (2015). The figure below is taken from Beyond Fire, with Leach & Oduro’s (2015) “High Cook” values converted to the same units and superimposed. PV-eCook bars are a combination of Leach & Oduro’s 5% and 20% discount rate modelling. Exchange rate of 1.12USD/EUR, Beyond Fire assume 5 ppl/HH, Leach & Oduro assume 4 ppl/HH. Read more…
Behavioural change
eCook: What behavioural challenges await this potentially transformative concept?
A new published paper by Ed Brown, Jon Leary and crowd.
(And, should it be spelt with a u or not a u? Word Press says it should be behavioral…..) Read more…
Smart Villages – Breath of fresh air
The networking organisation Smart Villages had a webinar yesterday on “A breath of fresh Air – what’s next for clean cookstoves“. While most of the talks still focus on biomass, our presentation used the opportunity to outline the more ‘changing landscape’ frame of ecook.
Cooking Diaries
We have just started to gather some evidence on how people cook. It might seem amazing given the huge amount of work on Improved (Charcoal and wood) Cookstoves, but other than Cowan 2008, we have been unable to find details on how much energy it actually takes to cook a meal in real world situations. Of course there is data on how much charcoal people consume, but cooking with charcoal is not the same as cooking with modern energy. It is that much easier to simmer food by turning down the gas or the electricity. [Indeed the picture is of wasted energy!! – why have the gas so high on such a small pot, the heat goes up around the pot! (and why doesnt it have a lid?)] Read more…
Solar Electric Cooking 