ASSIST: Mobile Monitoring for Cookstove Carbon Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa

Summary:
Most of Africa's population still cooks with wood, dung and other solid fuels over open fires or simple stoves. The resulting indoor air pollution is the largest cause of disease and death after malnutrition, unsafe sex, lack of safe water and adequate sanitation. Moreover, traditional cooking practices exacerbate deforestation and emit greenhouse gases (GHGs) and other pollutants, leading to both regional and global environmental degradation. Unsustainable wood harvesting affects agriculture directly by causing erosion that degrades arable land. Indeed, according to the US Department of Energy, about 75% of the wood harvested in Sub-Saharan Africa is for cooking.

Efficient cook stoves have the potential to mitigate deforestation, slash indoor air pollution and improve land use. They also reduce GHG emissions: by reducing fuelwood demand they help avoid the emissions that occur when non-renewable biomass is consumed. With the advent of carbon finance - the practice of developing carbon offsets and selling them to buyers in developed countries who wish to offset their climate change impact - these emission reductions present an important new source of revenue to cook stove businesses that can be used to scale-up their work. The potential of this approach, coupling cleaner cooking technology with carbon finance, is immense.

A common standard for developing cook stove carbon offsets, a methodology published by the Voluntary Gold Standard, requires a rigorous registration and verification process. Vendors are required to maintain comprehensive sales records that are later used by trained evaluators to follow up with stove owners about their fuel use and cooking habits (see http://www.cdmgoldstandard.org/ for details of what is required). This sales data is currently kept using pencil and paper, when it is kept at all, and compiling it is an ongoing challenge due to lack of infrastructure, literacy, and incentive.

We are developing an SMS-based system called ASSIST that allows vendors in the field to collect all needed records at the point of sale. The information can be sent to a centralized database using sellers' mobile phones. Addressing the data collection needs of cook stove businesses will enable them to scale up more effectively and make carbon finance more accessible, increasing their economic potential and maximizing their impact on unsustainable biomass use and public health.

Needs Assessment:
Until recently the primary barrier to large scale adoption of efficient cooking technologies was finance. Capital is needed to start and grow stove businesses, establish large scale marketing programs to raise awareness around this public health issue, and make stoves affordable to the lower income groups who need them most. While carbon finance presents an opportunity for cook stove vendors to overcome these challenges, the detailed recordkeeping and long term monitoring required is a significant barrier to entry for small and medium sized businesses.

When stoves are sold in Ghanaian villages, often in small quantities, the sales are entered in notebooks and eventually returned to a central location. This system is time consuming, limits data quality and consistency, and is fundamentally not scalable. Improving the process is an essential step towards scaling up the use of efficient cooking technology.

Required Resources:
ASSIST builds on established open source software and existing business relationships, limiting the resources required. Primary expenses include time for software development, implementation, and user training, as well as a budget for travel and equipment. We estimate a cost of USD 10,000 for an initial pilot, with costs decreasing significantly for future implementations. Once developed the tool will be readily adaptable to individual cook stove carbon projects at little marginal cost. ASSIST will be based on RapidSMS, an open source messaging framework developed by UNICEF to support their operations in the developing world, and will itself be open source.

Business Case:
Cook stove businesses in the developing world typically work with an experienced carbon project developer to monetize their greenhouse gas emission reductions. Initial development of ASSIST will take place in collaboration with project developer E+Carbon, who is working with a partner company in Ghana, Toyola Energy Limited, to generate carbon offsets from their stoves. Monitoring of stoves in the field can be accomplished through a third party, in this case Berkeley Air Monitoring Group.

SMS-based record keeping complements the services offered by businesses such as Berkeley Air and E+Carbon. Once it is demonstrated that ASSIST adds value to carbon project development, derivative tools can be incorporated into services offered by these and other organizations, paid for primarily through carbon revenue. In addition to providing data necessary for carbon offset development, future versions could help companies track supply chains, raw materials supply, and other important variables. Once the software is developed and piloted we do not anticipate the need for additional external funding.

Plan and Execution:
An alpha version of ASSIST has been created, and development is ongoing in anticipation of a pilot in Ghana in Fall or Winter of 2009. The organizations and individuals involved are:

Berkeley Air Monitoring Group: Berkeley Air Monitoring Group is a is a consulting firm providing rigorous scientific evaluation of initiatives designed to improve health and well being through improved household stoves, fuels, and education in developing countries. Berkeley Air is providing its expertise in both stove carbon monitoring and field techniques.

E+Carbon: In association with the nonprofit renewable energy investor E+Co, E+Carbon is a private company that originates, develops, and purchases emissions reductions from developing country-based companies and project owners. E+Carbon sells these emissions reductions to companies and individuals wishing to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. Berkeley Air and E+Carbon are working together on an improved cook stove project in Ghana where the software will be piloted.

Michael Benedict: Works for a US-based international development NGO where he has conducted research on the potential of carbon finance to support energy access in the developing world. He is interested in the application of mobile technology to improve monitoring and evaluation of international development projects. Michael is leading software design and development, and will provide support to E+Carbon and Berkeley Air during field testing, refinement, and implementation.

Toyola Energy Limited: A Ghanaian company that manufactures and sells efficient household cook stoves that burn about 40% less charcoal than their inefficient counterparts. These stoves mitigate indoor air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and curb deforestation. In addition to traditional financing, E+Co is helping Toyola to develop and sell carbon offsets from the stoves. The offsets will be sold to a major investment bank, while the funds generated from the sale of offsets will subsidize the cost of stoves to end users and be used to grow the business.

Real World Impact:
Over 80% of households in Sub-Saharan Africa cook using solid fuels, and the resulting indoor air pollution impacts the health of millions of individuals annually, mostly women and children. Improvements in record keeping such as those enabled by ASSIST are essential in order for the efficient cook stove industry to reach this scale. At any time, local company owners in African cities, carbon finance project developers in the US, and carbon auditors in Switzerland could gain access to real time field data and streamlined record keeping that facilitates access to carbon revenues. By improving the accuracy, quality, and speed of carbon data collecting, ASSIST will help to unleash the potential of carbon finance to promote cleaner cooking in Sub-Saharan Africa.