Clean Cooking using Improved Cookstoves in rural Nepal

The cookstove projects in Nepal is a 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 Nepal. 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.