US firm targets institutions with special stoves
What you need to know:
- Envirofit International, a social enterprise, is now running tests in selected schools expected to help in energy and forest conservation.
- The institutional cook stove has a unique design to ensure complete combustion with little smoke that makes it clean. It loses very little heat, making cooking easier and less expensive as well as time saving.
A US-based manufacturer of energy-saving stoves that opened a plant on Mombasa Road early this year is targeting institutions with products it says will reduce firewood cost by up to 80 per cent.
Envirofit International, a social enterprise, is now running tests in selected schools expected to help in energy and forest conservation.
“We have our first institutional cook stove models for trials at a few select schools,” said corporate affairs head Jessica Alderman. “So far it is doing well after one of the institutions we are working with reported that they normally spend Sh288,000 a year on firewood and this new stove will reduce their fuel costs by up to 80 per cent.”
Ms Alderman said that the new technology would officially be launched early next year after the pilot project.
According to Envirofit acting director Kenya Daniel Wald, the product would conserve trees.
“Our institutional stove trials have been a huge success. We are in the process of introducing it to this region first in Kenya with a brand name ‘Jiko Mama Yao’ and we anticipate to serve more than 600 schools and institutions in the first quarter of 2014,” said Mr Wald.
The institutional cook stove has a unique design to ensure complete combustion with little smoke that makes it clean. It loses very little heat, making cooking easier and less expensive as well as time saving, he said.
Kitengela Mixed School director Beatrice Abhisaki told the Business Daily that the technology could come in handy and reduce fuel costs.
“We spend about Sh320,000 on firewood alone every year and such technology will really help,” she said.
Mr Wald said that since the company started operating and later for the cook stoves had been increasing with markets in Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda.
“Since we launched our product in Kenya in the past three years we have seen exponential growth in the demand for this technology and to keep up with demand, we have doubled our production capacity in Kenya. We now produce up to 10,000 stoves per month,” he said.
Mr Wald added that the affordable clean cook stoves was a boost to poor households in terms of reducing energy costs and health hazards.
In Kenya, an estimated 95 per cent of the rural population relies on biomass as source of fuel, and 63 per cent of households still use basic cook stoves.
