Description:
For roughly half the world’s population, the source for both cooking and keeping warm is a simple fire pit surrounded by three large stones arranged to keep a cooking surface above the flames. The World Health Organization estimates that indoor air pollution from such cooking fires contributes to nearly two million premature deaths annually.
The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves is coordinating a multi-national, multi-disciplinary effort to address the need for better cookstoves in developing countries. Its approach involves enhancing demand for clean cookstoves and fuels, strengthening the supply of clean cookstoves and fuels, and fostering the enabling environment for a thriving market for clean cooking solutions.
Together with other Federal agencies and private sector partners that support the Alliance’s efforts, EPA is supporting research that evaluates cookstove performance in the laboratory and in the field.
The need for electrical power is increasingly being added to the needs for cooking and providing heat in homes in developing countries. A technical challenge is to integrate all three capabilities into a single technology that could work in such conditions. Therefore, EPA is looking for the development and commercialization of:
- 2A: Integrated cooking, heating, and electric power generation. Successful technologies will be able to function using small amounts of a variety of fuels (e.g., various types of biomass, liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, solar, etc.), produce far less indoor air pollution than currently used technologies, be affordable, have wide applicability, be rugged and reliable, and easy to use.
