(Kampala) National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) of Ugandawarns that the country’s environment is in danger. as much of its forest cover and wetlands could soon disappear.
Policy
So, you wanna deploy cookstoves to every corner of the world? McKinsey & Co. has one word for you: networks
In a meeting this week with the folks from Acumen Fund, we were asked what was holding up the large-scale deployment of improved cookstove worldwide?
The truth is there is no simple answer. Take your pick: low levels of capital investments, tariff barriers, lack of incentive policies, fluctuation price of oil, poor social marketing, instability in the carbon credit market, absence of standards, etc.
Looking for solutions, the folks at McKinsey and Co. think stakeholders would do well to focus on networking and sharing resources.
Listen to the Harvard Business Review and they’ll tell you the US needs to spend more time investing in social entrepreneurs in the developing world and less playing the role of incubator.
Now we’re cooking: USAID to grant some $20m for indoor air pollution over 5 years
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) seeks to award a five-year $100 million Cooperative Agreement, Supportive Environments for Healthy Households and Communities. Approximately 20 percent of the proposed work will focus on indoor air quality. The RFA lists “increased use of alternatives to cooking with biomass fuels using traditional stoves and/or increased use of housing improvements to improve indoor air quality” as a key environmental health intervention.
How BP is going to help alleviate energy poverty
BP, the US Congress, and the White House don’t know this yet, but we think the Macondo gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is going to help put better cookstoves, fuels, and policies in the pots of the world’s 3 billion energy-poor households.
To achieve cookstove scale we need standards
What’s more important: reducing fuel consumption or reducing emissions of black carbon and other toxic gases?
The answer is, of course, both, but designing a stove that meets the highest current ratings in emissions reduction and energy consumption at a reasonable cost has so far proven elusive.
Coming up with the right standards will be critical to getting cookstove projects to scale, especially since carbon-credit financing will be vital for some projects to make financial sense, says Dean Still of the Aprovecho Research Center.