In this interview, Susanna Berkouwer, Assistant Professor of Business Economics & Public Policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, explains what their cookstove research in Kenya has revealed.
We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 1,000 households in Nairobi to study the Jikokoa/ECOAchar cookstove (from manufacturer Burn). We collected five independent sources of data: Purple Air devices, charcoal ash weighing, high-frequency SMSes, in-person surveys, and phone surveys.
All confirm that buying a Jikokoa causes the buyer to use 40% less charcoal. Note that we are ambivalent about whether there is stacking: it is possible that some of the charcoal people purchase is used for their old stove. Any stacking would not affect our calculations in any way. What we care about is the total amount of charcoal used by a household, and that number goes down by 40%.
For the average user, a 40% reduction amounts to a reduction of 330 kg per year. Our calculations suggest that this causes a reduction of 3.5 tons of CO2 per year, in part because there has been significant deforestation in East Africa. If you want to be very conservative (optimistic) and assume that there is significant reforestation, then a more conservative calculation would suggest it causes a reduction of 1.75 tons of CO2 per year.
