[Stoves] ***SPAM*** Journal Article on Rock Beds

[K McLean]

Here is a link <https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1dOug3TGDpzZma> to a new
article on rock beds in open-fire cookstoves in Kenya.   The link
should work through August.  Here is the abstract:

Low-cost interventions to reduce emissions and fuel consumption in open
wood fires in rural communities: Evidence from field surveys

We evaluate the impact of a grass-roots campaign promoting adoption of
simple modifications to cooking fires in rural communities in Western
Kenya. The modifications consist of adding rock-beds to open fires or
simple wood stoves, increasing airflow, improving combustion efficiency,
and decreasing the distance between the fire and cooking pot, which
improves heat transfer. The campaign was sponsored by Sun24, a US-based
non-profit organization. They trained women leaders active in a local
Anglican diocese consisting of 9200 families. The women returned to their
communities and held their own trainings at local parishes. We randomly
sampled 1362 households from those communities to understand the impact of
the campaign. 67% of surveyed families were aware of rock beds: 51% had
attended trainings themselves and 16% heard about rock beds from relatives
or neighbors. 85% of the families that had heard about rock beds installed
them at home and continued to use them for many months after first hearing
about them. Nearly all users express a high degree of satisfaction with
rock beds and 67% of trained respondents report cooking two or more meals
daily on with rock beds. We examined variation in weekly and daily
frequency of use and found larger households are twice as likely to use
rock beds daily and to cook all their meals with rock beds than smaller
households (p< 0.01). Respondents that were trained by Sun24 or women
leaders were nearly three times as likely to use rockbeds daily than
respondents who heard about rock beds by word-of-mouth (p< 0.01). Among
households reporting daily use, better educated respondents were nearly
twice as likely to use rockbeds for all meals. However, respondents who
owned charcoal or LPG stoves were 30% and 60% less likely to use rockbeds
for all their meals than other respon-dents (p< 0.05,p< 0.01). Using a
regional estimate of“non-renewable biomass”of 36%, we estimate annual
emission reductions of roughly 480 kg of CO2-equivalent for each adopter.
Sun24 invested roughly USD 700 in training women leaders and facilitating
rockbed adoption in thousands of rural households. Previous research found
that median fuelwood savings of nearly 30% when families modified open fire
stoves with rock beds. Applying this average to all adopting families
results in annual wood savings of 390 kg per family or 2900 tons per year
across the diocese. Using a regional estimate of“non-renewable biomass”and
assuming rockbed use persists for 5 years, total emission reductions would
be 11.8 tCO2e at a mitigation cost of just USD 0.06 per ton CO2e making
rockbeds a cost-effective mitigation strategy.
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