AFFORDABLE SOLAR COOKERS FOR THE NEEDIEST

AFFORDABLE SOLAR COOKERS FOR THE NEEDIEST
Beverly L. Blum
Solar Cookers International
1919 21st Street, #101
Sacramento, CA 95814
e-mail: bev@solarcookers.org
ABSTRACT
One third of the world still cooks with wood, and for half of
those people wood and other biomass are already scarce.
Many of them live in sun-rich areas. This paper describes 1)
an affordable solar cooker that cooks family meals, 2) a
related water pasteurization indicator (WAPI) which saves
fuel by eliminating the need to boil water and milk, and 3)
effective promotion methods aimed at creating sustainable
markets and educating policy-makers. Together these are
reducing burdens and costs of fuel gathering, pressure on
environments, water-borne intestinal diseases and
respiratory diseases from cooking smoke for 30,000
families in Africa.
1. INTRODUCTION
Solar Cookers International estimates that in the last decade
solar cooker use has increased five-fold worldwide to about
1.5 million households, an increase closely linked to
widespread, growing shortages of fuel wood. The Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that two billion
people still cook with wood, and that half of these are
suffering shortages of fuel wood and other biomass to cook
daily meals.1 Many wood-scarce areas are sun-rich, where
solar cookers would be not only useful but literally lifesaving.
The European Commission and solar cooker leaders
estimate that one billion people (165 - 200 million
households) need solar cookers today. 2,3 This paper
describes two new tools and effective promotion essentials
to help make solar cooking available to those who could
benefit most.
2. WHO ARE THE NEEDY?
First, who and where are those who need solar cookers?
Most of them live in just twenty-five fuel-scarce, sun-rich
countries, primarily in western Asia and eastern Africa.4 In
many areas, wood that was once free is now an increasingly
expensive commodity. Where wood is still free it is often at
ever-longer distances for women to carry heavy loads –
even those who are pregnant, those with infants, the sick
and the elderly. Deforestation trends are also altering water
supplies. One-third of the world must trek farther and
farther for water, which is more and more likely to contain
disease organisms. Fifty thousand children die every day
from water-borne diseases.5
Apart from fuel shortages, traditional wood cooking has
many health risks. The links between respiratory diseases
and indoor cooking smoke are well documented. The World
Bank says eliminating indoor smoke from cooking and
heating could cut childhood pneumonia by half.6,7 Even
with fuel efficient stoves there are still soot, air pollution
and the burden of getting wood. As solar cooker pioneer
Klaus Kuhnke observed, “If cooking with wood were to be
introduced as a new cooking method today it would be a
tough sell – it is dirty, smelly, unhealthy, unsafe around
children and requires a great deal of skill.”8
3. AFFORDABLE SOLAR COOKERS
To spread widely where they are needed most, solar
cookers must be both affordable and easily obtained for at
least some of the poor. Distribution through charities may
always be needed for elderly and disadvantated, but is
difficult and usually unsustainable until solar cookers are
widely known and available through local businesses in
many commercial marketplaces
Fig. 1: The cookit, a panel type solar cooker
One example of affordable solar cookers is the recently
developed panel cooker called a cookit. The cookit reflector
is engineered to focus sunlight onto a cooking pot for
several hours without needing repositioning. Heat is
retained around the pot by a simple, clear plastic bag. The
cookit is often made from cardboard, aluminum foil and
glue, and black paint is provided – if needed – for the sides
and lid of a light-colored or shiny metal cooking pot. The
cookit’s flat reflective panels make it safe around children
and easy to make. It is foldable, saves one ton of wood or
equivalent fuel per year with regular use, cooks for six
people, pasteurizes one liter of water per hour, and pays for
itself in two months in fuel savings alone. Cookits can be
mass-produced in most countries, and also in cottage
industries.
SCI field tested the cookits in Kakuma Refugee Camp in
Kenya, starting in 1995. Their clear benefits led SCI to
expand that project for eight years and prompted grants
from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) and the United Nations Education and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) to begin projects in Aisha
Refugee Camp in Ethiopia and two communities in
Zimbabwe respectively. In 2000 SCI launched a new
project in western Kenya, with a goal to foster commercial
dissemination throughout Kenya.
Cookits cost the same or less than other cooking methods to
cook meals and pasteurize water, and they reduce a family’s
need for diminishing biomas by one third. Independent
evaluations of solar cooker promotion projects confirm
their high uptake, ongoing use, fuel savings, time and labor
savings, and nutrition benefits.9,10,11,12,13 According to
independent solar cooker promoters that correspond with
SCI, the cookit has also been copied and produced
independently in twenty-five other countries.
4. A FUEL-SAVING PASTEURIZATION INDICATOR
Another simple tool is a water pasteurization indicator
(WAPI). Pasteurization destroys all microorganisms that
cause diseases from drinking contaminated water and milk.
A small polycarbonate tube contains a wax that melts when
water or milk is heated enough to be pasteurized
(65˚C/149˚F). This saves much fuel by eliminating the need
to boil water or milk to ensure that the pasteurization
temperature has been reached.
Fig. 2: A water pasteurization indicator (WAPI)
5. DISSEMINATION STRATEGIES
These tools are affordable and can be produced in most
countries. The introduction methods are equally important.
This paper started by describing the needs which solar
cookers address. Those needs affect the poorest
disproportionately. How does one market to the neediest?
5.1 Creating sustainable commercial markets
Effective marketing of any new product recognizes that
most of us are not risk-takers. Very few, especially among
the poorest, will be the first to step forward to try a strange
new idea, especially where it targets only the neediest. The
way to reach the neediest fastest appears on the surface to
be very indirect: the first to try solar cooking in new areas
are nearly always school teachers and other professionals
with a bit of extra income, time, education and energy to try
new ideas.
Solar cookers, like all other new and different products,
must first be tried and endorsed by trend setters and local
leaders who find them useful, convenient and beneficial for
themselves. Humanitarian groups are frequently puzzled
when the neediest seem disinclined to try something new.
Solar cookers commercially marketed to upscale and
moderate-income families make it much easier in the end
for the neediest to dare try solar cooking, and this therefore
is an important step toward uptake among the poor.
5.2 Removing barriers to commercial equity
Successful marketing of solar cookers also requires
advocacy among policy makers, both governmental and
nongovernmental, at many levels within and beyond
countries. The fuel shortages and health hazards burden so
many millions – especially women and girl children. Yet,
these problems seem strangely invisible in public
discussions of topics directly related: hunger, malnutrition,
poverty, environmental degradation, economics, education
– especially for girls, and public health issues such as
respiratory and intestinal diseases.
Further, many governments subsidize unsustainable fossil
fuels by 20% or more. Such subsidies make solar devices
appear more expensive when they are actually cheaper.
The old biases against solar cookers (still frequently uttered
by policy makers based on decades-old stories) –“too
expensive, dangerous to the eyes, too different to be
accepted, too slow, unstable in the wind, and hard to
maintain,” to name just a few – are way out of date.
SCI has found the following are essential for creating new
markets:
 Work with local women to adapt local foods to
solar cooking with satisfying (often preferred)
results.
 Orient community leaders and engage their
support.
 Introduce, instruct and follow-up about 100 pilot
households with solar cookers through group
workshops for neighbors.
 Several months later select the most enthusiastic
new solar cooks and offer added training for them
to become trainers.
 Support new trainers for one to two years to
demonstrate solar cooking at public events, lead
group workshops, teach their neighbors and
distribute (for refugees) or sell (in settled
communities) solar cookers for family income. In
the refugee camps, women refugees ran such a
program very effectively.
 Facilitate production and distribution systems to
assure wide access to supplies and maintenance
services.
 Create public awareness and a sustainable market
for producers and distributors and to help new
trainers become successful micro-entrepreneurs.
 Educate policy makers in and out of governments
to support solar technologies as much or more than
fossil fuels and nuclear energy.
6. CONCLUSION
SCI has demonstrated and documented acceptance, benefits
and cost effectiveness of affordable solar cookers and solar
water pasteurization indicators among 30,000 families in
fuel-scarce, sunny regions of Africa - 20,000 refugee
families in Kenya and Ethiopia and 10,000 families in
settled communities in Zimbabwe and Kenya.14,15
According to SCI correspondence with hundreds of
independent solar cooker promoters worldwide, cookits and
WAPIs have been copied in at least 25 other countries.
Independent evaluations of two projects confirm high
uptake, ongoing levels of use, fuel savings, time and labor
savings, nutrition benefits. In Aisha Refugee Camp in
Ethiopia, 94% of ITS 2000 families adopted solar cooking
in three years. A cookit can be produced in most countries
for about $5 US,, lasts about two years and can save a ton
of firewood per year.16 Families who use their solar cookers
to pasteurize family drinking water report reduced diarrheal
diseases deadly to children.17,18
SCI has consultative status at the United Nations and
facilitates information exchange among independent solar
cooker experts worldwide. At an Asia/Africa Seminar of
Solar Cooker Leaders in February 2005, participants
committed to collaborate to educate governments and other
policy makers about both the needs for and multiple
benefits of affordable solar cookers and related tools in sunrich,
fuel-scarce regions of the world. In fact, solar cookers
assist progress toward all eight of the United Nations
Millennium Development Goals for the year 2015.19
7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The cookit panel cooker was developed by a dozen SCI
volunteers, starting with Roger Bernard in France.
The WAPI grew out of microbiologist Robert Metcalf’s
decades of research on solar water pasteurization20,21 with
help from Dale Andreatta. Metcalf has also introduced a
Petri film from the food industry to water sanitation
industries for simpler, cheaper water testing for E. coli.
SCI’s Barbara Knudson designed the group-workshops-forneighbors
dissemination strategy and proved its
effectiveness in Kakuma Refugee Camp. Countless other
solar cooker pioneers have contributed to the effective
dissemination methods.
8. REFERENCES/ END NOTES
(1) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) . State of the
world’s forests, 1997
(2) Ossenbrink, H., Opening remarks by European
Commission Head of Renewable Energies Unit,
Proceedings of World solar cooking and food processing
conference, Varese Italy, UNESCO,1999
(3) Grupp, M., The untapped market for solar cookers.
Solar Box Journal, 1994
(4) Solar Cookers International, 25 Best Countries for Solar
Cooking, 2003 (unpublished)
(5) World Health Organization, 1998
(6) Töpfer, K. , Speech at the Third U.N. Conference on
Least Developed Countries, Brussels, 2001
(7) World Bank Development Report, 1993
(8) Kuhnke, K., Cooking, cooling, biking: acceptance of
habit-changing technologies in developing countries,
Conference Proceedings of World Solar Cooking and Food
Processing Strategies and Financing, UNESCO, 1999
(9) UNHCR xxx
(10) Konde, A., Aisha Solar Cooking Project Evaluation,
2002
(11) Center for Independent Research and Energy for
Sustainable Development Africa, Evaluation of the Solar
Cooking Project in Kakuma Refugee Camp, 2003
(12) Chandrasekar, U. & Kowsalya S., Comparative nutrient
profile and beta carotene retention of foods and recipes
cooked in solar cookers as against conventional cooking,
1997
Easwaran, P.P. & Kalpana, N., Acceptability and nutrient
content of selected recipes prepared in microwave ovens
and solar cookers, 1997
Murthy, N.K. & Chelvi, S., Analysis of antioxidant status in
a leafy vegetable boiled in solar cooker in comparison with
other conventional methods, 1997
and
Scheffler, W. & Sutter, C., Evaluation of solar community
kitchens in Gujarat,
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Solar
Cookers Use and Technology, Coimbatore, India, 1997.
(13) Palmer, R., Kota, M. & Wenzel, M., The DME/GTZ
solar cooking field test in South Africa: a study in end-user
acceptance and pilot commercial dissemination.
Proceedings of the International Conference on Solar
Cooking 7-29 November, Kimberley, South Africa, 2000
(14) Konde, A., op. cit., 2002
(15)Center for Independent Research and Energy for
Sustainable Development Africa, op. cit. 2003
(16) Many solar cooker projects, including Heibi, China;
South Africa Mines & Minerals; and Costa Rica
(17) Solar Cookers International (unpublished reports from
Nyakach Project, Solar Cookers International xxx
(18) AHEAD, Tanzania, (unpublished), 2004
(19) Solar Cooker Review, Nov. 2004
(20) Ciochetti, D. A. & Metcalf, R. H., Pasteurization of
Naturally Contaminated Water with Solar Energy, Applied
and Environmental Microbiology, 1984
(21) Safapour, N. & Metcalf, R. H., Enhancement of Solar
Water Pasteurization with Reflectors, Applied and
Environmental Microbiology, 1999