Our Bangladesh cookstove projects, part of our many clean cooking ventures, is a small yet significant step towards ensuring that the vast numbers of rural population around the world have access to clean energy. More than 3 billion people cook food and heat water using open fires and inefficient stoves fuelled by biomass. Their dependence on these fuel types and inefficient cookstoves have many social and environmental impacts including indoor air pollution leading to ill-health, an increase in the greenhouse gas emissions and a constant pressure on the forests. The projects involve the distribution of biomass-based improved cookstoves to rural households and address the issue of limited or no access to clean energy by promoting widespread adoption of efficient cookstoves in households across Bangladesh. These stoves burn fuel more efficiently and are designed to reduce smoke, particulate matter and other gaseous emissions, thus creating cleaner indoor air for women and children. Due to their higher thermal efficiency relative to traditional stoves, these improved stoves reduce the amount of biomass fuel consumption for meeting similar thermal energy needs.

The projects are based in Bangladesh, which is among the world’s least developed countries and continues to face high levels of poverty, increased population density and lack of access to energy, which contributes to its low economic development. Typically, across rural Bangladesh, the three-stone traditional cook stoves fuelled by biomass are still used for cooking and heating needs.

The projects have disseminated high efficiency biomass-fired cookstoves to replace the existing traditional cookstoves in beneficiary households. The cookstoves will be constructed by local partners thus creating local employment opportunities. The stoves are designed to increase heat transfer to the cooking pot while being suitable for traditional utensils and cooking habits of people in Bangladesh. So far, more than one million cookstoves have been installed through our projects in Bangladesh.

The projects contribute directly to the SDGs. The benefits to the environment include a reduction in firewood consumption and emission of greenhouse gases, the conservation of forest and biodiversity. The local population benefits from employment creation and enhancement of technical skills during the production and installation of the cook stoves. With these smokeless stoves in their homes, women and children experience better indoor air quality and fewer incidences of smoke and fire-related injuries. Typically, in rural areas, women spend a lot of their time collecting wood for cooking; with the improved cook stoves, the daily drudgery of women is reduced drastically.