Tackling access to clean cooking energy solutions

Promoting improved biomass cookstove

September 3, 2024

Damenech Dima, 34, lives with her husband and three children in Chano Dorga, a small village located in the Gamo zone of Southern Ethiopia. The family’s livelihood heavily depends on agriculture which brings them an income that hardly covers their basic needs, let alone improving their lives.

Damenech’s life is a mirror for many women in the locality where days are spent handling all the household chores, taking care of the children, and supporting their husband with agricultural tasks.

Demenech’s three-room house is made of wood and mud. An additional room serves as a cooking space, which is not the case for most of the rural households where cooking is done in the common space.

The women in the village use a traditional cooking method passed down through generations locally known as Choche. This involves stone and firewood and is widely practiced in almost every household.

Damenech uses wood for cooking and baking qita, a flattened bread that is commonly ate in the area. “Sometimes, the wood gets wet and creates heavy smoke” Damenech described her daily challenges, explain that “The cooking room has a small window, making it difficult for proper ventilation. Besides, it took me several hours to prepare the daily meals for the family on top of the other duties I should handle.”

Dawit Tibebu currently serves as the Director of the Ethiopian Clean Cooking Alliance. The Alliance partners with the Ministry of Water and Energy and UNDP under the Climate Promise II project, which supports Ethiopia to contribute towards the Paris Agreement climate goals.

Dawit elaborates on the adverse effects of traditional cooking methods, “The continued use of traditional biomass fuels and stoves severely impacts health, the environment, and climate. The incomplete combustion of wood fuels in traditional stoves produces high levels of household air pollution, which the World Health Organization estimates cause 63,000 premature deaths annually in Ethiopia¹. Women and children, who spend the most time near cooking fires, are particularly at risk.”

Dawit additionally referenced the WHO guidelines and emphasized the importance of alternative energy solutions for rural communities. “It is recommended to limit Particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure to 15 µg/m³ within 24 hours², but most Ethiopian households face four to ten times higher levels. Improved cookstoves can reduce fuelwood consumption by 50%, easing the burden on women and lowering household fuel needs.”

Data from the Ethiopian forest sector review³and a study on forestry⁴showed that traditional cooking practices have led to the rapid degradation of the country's forests, with an estimated annual loss of 140,000 hectares.

This reliance results in about 116 million cubic meters as fuel for domestic cooking. Consequently, this excessive use of non-renewable biomass significantly contributes to climate change, not only by increasing CO2 concentrations but also through the production of black carbon, a potent climate-warming pollutant.

Based on the study conducted in the rural community of Gamo Zone by Dawit as part of his thesis, a household can consume 12.4kg of fuel daily and the fuel use per capital is around 3.3kg per person using the traditional stove. From the sample of particulate matter measured by utilizing PATS+ emission measurement instrument for three consecutive days for 24 hours interval the average emission is 1113.3 microgram/m3.

Demenech’s family was part of the 38 households in the Gamo Zone identified by the study to help field test the performance of the improved cookstove solutions. The introduction of improved cookstove is offering a cleaner, more efficient, and sustainable energy solution. After shifting to the improved cookstove, Damenech’s daily wood fuel usage was significantly reduced to 6.8kg and the consumption per person was 2.5kg.

The particulate matter emissions for the improved cookstove were measured for three consecutive days at 24-hour intervals and the emissions level were found to be around 562.06 micrograms per m3.

Shifting to clean cooking technologies is important in reducing health risks and decreasing the high dependency and unsustainable utilization of forest resources in rural areas.

Despite continued engagement of various stakeholders to promote clean cooking, challenges remain in scaling up this solution. Roadblocks to adopting this solution include the lack of awareness of the risk of traditional cookstoves as opposed to the benefits of clean cooking options, affordability and availability of the technologies, low private sector involvement, scaling and sustainability, and inaccessibility of communities in the off-grid areas.

These challenges are not unique to Ethiopia. Taking these global challenges into account, the UNDP launched the Climate Promise project, an initiative that supports more than 120 countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and address the challenges of climate change. Climate Promise adopts a holistic approach that encompasses 13 technical areas, including adaptation and resilience, climate finance, climate security, renewable energy, and net zero pathway.

In Ethiopia, the initial Climate Promise I project was implemented in collaboration with the World Bank, World Resource Institute (WRI), and the NDC Partnership Support Unit to provide support to the government of Ethiopia in updating its National Determined Contribution (NDC) and integrating it into the 10-year development plan of the country.

Under the Climate Promise II project, UNDP is collaborating with GIZ and SNV to support the government of Ethiopia’s national efforts to improve access to clean cooking energy solutions and achievement of the SDG 7 and NDC targets by 2030. Achieving these goals will enable Ethiopia to improve health and environmental quality by reducing dependence on crop residues and dung as a source of energy, which can instead now be used as organic inputs for agricultural land.

Supporting households to use cleaner energy alternatives will help decrease deforestation and boost agricultural productivity.

“Developing a comprehensive and integrated roadmap and investment plan to guide policymakers and all relevant stakeholders is crucial,” explains Bemnet Teshome, project manager of Climate Promise II. He elaborates that the project is strategically designed to address sector gaps and promote a more sustainable practice, noting that, “Strengthening the existing multi-stakeholder coordination platform to harmonise and align clean cooking energy initiatives supported by the local communities, the public, international development partners, and private and civil society organisations is a priority”.

Bemnet further stressed that conducting value chain analysis is crucial to identify service delivery constraints and opportunities across the chain of operations, from manufacturing to the cooking energy solutions markets. This approach will help promote solutions based on the market and the consumer's needs.

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Richard Sieff et al, (2022) Ethiopia eCooking Market Assessment

2. World Health Organization. (2018). Household Air Pollution and Health.

3. MoEFCC. (2017). Ethiopia Forest sector review.

4. Kilawe, E., & Habimana, D. (2016). FORESTRY CONTRIBUTION TO NATIONAL ECONOMY AND TRADE IN Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.