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RR RUEHAST RUEHCHI RUEHDH RUEHDT RUEHHM RUEHLN RUEHMA RUEHNH RUEHPB
RUEHPOD RUEHSL RUEHTM RUEHTRO
DE RUEHBK #3072/01 3380940
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 040940Z DEC 09
FM AMEMBASSY BANGKOK
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 9181
INFO RUCNASE/ASEAN MEMBER COLLECTIVE
RUEHZN/ENVIRONMENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COLLECTIVE
RHMCSUU/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHINGTON DC
RHMFIUU/HQ EPA WASHINGTON DC
RUCPDC/NOAA WASHINGTON DC
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 7754
RUEHKH/AMEMBASSY KHARTOUM 0034
RUEHBR/AMEMBASSY BRASILIA 0001
RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI 5864

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BANGKOK 003072 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR OES; EAP, S/SECC 
STATE PLEASE PASS TO EPA/OIA, DOE/PI, NOAA, NSF, USDA/FS 
STATE PASS TO NSF/MMcAuliffe,PMazumder 
USAID ANE/AA,ANE/TS,EGAT/AA,EGAT/ESP,EGAT/I&E,GH/AA , GH/MCH 
PACOM FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SECURITY UNIT 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: EAID ENRG EAGR KGHG KGCC SENV ASEAN SOCI TH
 
SUBJECT: FIRE IN THE KITCHEN: COOK STOVES, HEALTH AND GLOBAL 
WARMING 
 
REF: A) Ndjamena 0460; (B) Geneva 0367, 0360, 0349; (C) 08 Jakarta 
1973 
 
BANGKOK 00003072  001.3 OF 003 
 
¶1. SUMMARY: The US/ASEAN Next Generation Cook Stove Workshop was 
held at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok November 16-20. 
 Old cook stoves are a source of considerable indoor pollution and 
accompanying health problems in the developing world, and the new 
technologies showcased may offer good opportunities for future U.S. 
development assistance.  With interagency sponsorship, the workshop 
brought together academics, inventors, manufacturers and donors to 
discuss the state of the art in improved cook stove design, 
performance, testing and distribution.  Inventors and engineers 
exhibited new features of the cook stoves, such as reduced fuel use, 
cleaner burning mechanisms and appealing designs for marketing to 
poor households in developing countries.  Workshop discussions 
focused on stove design, emissions testing protocols and new 
approaches to scaling up programs that are aimed at improving health 
locally and improving the environment globally.  END SUMMARY. 
 
 
------------------------ 
BACKGROUND: HEALTH RISKS 
------------------------ 
¶2. More than three billion people use traditional cook stoves to 
meet cooking and heating needs.  Up to 95% of the rural population 
in poor countries relies on solid fuels, including biomass and coal 
for fuel. Biomass accounts for about 70% of total household fuel use 
in Asia and coal accounts for 10%.  While traditional stoves produce 
air pollutants, improved cook stoves aim to increase fuel efficiency 
while decreasing pollution.  Smoke emission from traditional cook 
stoves is the fourth highest health risk factor in poor countries. 
According to the WHO, acute respiratory infections cause 17% of 
deaths among children under five.  Indoor air pollution caused by 
burning biomass fuels and coal is linked to approximately one-third 
of these fatal acute respiratory infections.  About 500-600 million 
improved household cook stoves are needed to replace the traditional 
stoves currently in use. 
 
------------------------------- 
BACKGROUND: ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS 
------------------------------- 
¶3. Greenhouse gas emissions from traditional cook stoves are 
increasingly significant.  The incomplete combustion of biomass fuel 
from traditional cook stoves releases black carbon, or soot, which 
contributes to global warming.  Globally, household combustion is 
responsible for as much as half of all black carbon emissions from 
human sources.  In regions with mountain glaciers, such as the 
Himalayas, black carbon emitted from burning biomass increases 
glacial melting as black carbon settles on glaciers. A recent 
estimate found that black carbon may account for as much as half of 
Arctic warming. 
 
------------------ 
COOKSTOVE WORKSHOP 
------------------ 
¶4. Attendees at the U.S./ASEAN Next Generation Cook Stove Workshop 
included climate scientists, engineers, cook stove manufacturers, 
donors, and US government agencies, including State, USAID, the 
Environmental  Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Energy (DOE), 
National Science Foundation (NSF)and various USG-sponsored 
laboratories.  EAP/RSP and the joint USAID/State-supported 
ASEAN-U.S. Technical Assistance and Training Facility organized the 
workshop with funding support from the National Science Foundation, 
Air Force Research Laboratory, and sponsorship from Penn State, 
UC-Berkeley, Clarkson University and the Asian Institute of 
Technology.  Various NGOs and firms that design, build and 
distribute stoves came from Latin America, Africa and Asia - South, 
East and Southeast.  The four-day workshop focused on discussing new 
technologies and bringing scientists together with donors and 
non-governmental organizations. 
 
----------------------------- 
IMPROVED COOK STOVES PROGRAMS 
----------------------------- 
¶5. Cook stove interventions in the past aimed to improve health by 
reducing indoor air pollution through decreasing smoke quantity, 
diverting smoke outdoors, or reducing the length of human exposure 
 
BANGKOK 00003072  002 OF 003 
 
 
to smoke.  India, China, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, and other 
countries have undertaken national improved stove programs.  With 
the exception of the Chinese effort (1983-1998) that resulted in the 
distribution of 183 million stoves, most of those efforts resulted 
in distributions that were well below the necessary saturation 
levels.  More recently, cook stove emissions were identified as a 
contributor to climate change. 
 
¶6. Although past programs did not aim to mitigate black carbon 
emissions, new stove technologies can lower such emissions, some 
even down to those equal to clean fuels emissions.  There are now 
many stove types, constructed from adobe, tin, and metal alloys, and 
powered by wood and compressed biomass with more locally appropriate 
designs.  Improved cook stoves range in price from US$1 to several 
thousand dollars, depending on functions, size and materials. 
Manufacturers and inventors aim to increase adoption of improved 
stoves by including beneficiaries in the design process.  Combined 
with a better understanding of private-public partnerships, there is 
new potential to improve household cook stoves in use today to 
achieve co-benefits in human health and environment. 
 
¶7. Scale up of cook stove programs is another issue discussed at 
length in the workshop.  Despite recent breakthroughs in developing 
cleaner burning, durable and affordable cook stoves, investment in 
scientific and engineering research for improved cook stoves and 
emissions testing is deficient.  Capacity for stove development and 
manufacturing at a local level is another challenge.  In parts of 
Asia, there is little technical manpower available exclusively for 
improved stove programs.  Regional and national level capacity 
building is necessary to scale up.  The manufacture of millions of 
improved stoves will require partnerships among scientists, the 
private sector and donors through a variety of innovative business 
models.  Many workshop experts noted that to achieve global health 
and emissions goals, between 100 and 125 million efficient stoves 
would need to be distributed each year. 
 
------------ 
USG EFFORTS 
------------ 
¶7. EPA has worked since 2002 through the Partnership for Clean 
Indoor Air (PCIA) on improving cook stove technology.  PCIA aims to 
improve health, livelihood, and quality of life by reducing exposure 
to air pollution, primarily among women and children, from household 
energy use.  The USAID Regional Development Mission for Asia (RDMA), 
in Bangkok, is undertaking a study on the causes and effects of 
black carbon in the region with a focus on possible interventions, 
including consideration of cook stove programs. (NOTE: the pending 
Waxman-Markey legislation would establish useful standards that 
might be helpful in future USG programming.  The legislation defines 
"improved" as reducing fuel consumption by 50% and black carbon 
emissions by 60%, and reducing childhood pneumonia by 30%. 
Investment in technology and scale-up would be needed to reach those 
standards. End Note.) 
 
------------------ 
CASE STUDY: DARFUR 
------------------ 
¶8. Case studies from around the world, including India, Brazil, 
Sudan and China were presented at the workshop; the Darfur program 
was particularly dramatic.  In 2006, with support from the USAID 
Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, scientists at the University 
of California at Berkeley brought improved cook stoves to internally 
displaced persons (IDP) in the Darfur region of Sudan.  The IDPs 
face severe fuel shortages for cooking and an increasingly larger 
denuded zone around the camps from ongoing wood gathering for fuel. 
Women and girls routinely risk rape and mutilation as they are 
forced to venture farther away from the camps to gather fuel wood, 
with typical trips lasting seven hours.  Scientists at UC Berkeley 
modified an existing cook stove design to create a stove that was 
relevant to local cooking needs and that could be locally and 
rapidly assembled.  The improved cook stove burned 30% of the fuel 
wood of the traditional fire previously used by the IDPs.  With 
inputs from women in the camps, the team of scientists further 
improved the stove design, saving the refugees the equivalent of 
$250 per year in fuel costs and reducing their risk of rape or 
mutilation by decreasing the number of wood-gathering trips. 
 
BANGKOK 00003072  003 OF 003 
 
 
Approximately 5000 of these stoves are in use in Darfur, out of a 
total need of 400,000 stoves.  For this subsidized program, the 
stoves cost $30 delivered but the women were charged $5; although 
this was still expensive for IDPs in Darfur, the women bought the 
stoves. Through this work, scientists learned that while 
affordability is crucial to increasing uptake in purchase of 
improved cook stoves, social acceptability is the key to adoption. 
 
------- 
COMMENT 
------- 
¶9. This multi-agency, multi-disciplinary workshop brought together 
the tools to make improved cook stoves feasible; new data on health 
and climate change impacts highlight the importance of and 
opportunities for addressing cook stove emissions.  The combination 
of new designs, numerous manufacturers, new testing technology, 
examples of successful distribution in Brazil, China and India all 
suggest that the USG consider supporting cook stove programs to 
reduce poverty and stimulate sustainable development.  The most 
appropriate scale and types of program interventions will require 
careful coordination and deliberation among all USG agency 
stakeholders.  Future activities should take full consideration of 
lessons learned from prior development assistance experience 
associated with promoting improved cook stoves, particularly through 
USAID. 
 
----------------------------- 
FURTHER INFORMATION AND EVENTS 
----------------------------- 
¶10. The complete set of conference materials will be available from 
the Asian Institute of Technology at   (www.ait.th); for a cd of 
workshop presentations, contact regional ESTH Hub officer Hal 
Howard, howardhh@state.gov, who can also supply the conference 
report and road map when completed.  The University of Iowa 
organizes an annual cook stove conference in January, in Seattle: 
contact Mark Bryden at kmbryden@iastate.edu.  The Asia Regional 
Cookstove Program (ARECOP) has set up a regional stove testing 
center in Yogyakarta, Indonesia that will use the latest technology 
to support stove development in Southeast Asia; contact Christina 
Aristanti at Christina@arecop.org. For EPA's program, see 
(www.pciaonline.org).  Reftels describe cook stove issues from the 
perspective of the WHO and other posts. For Darfur experiences, see 
(www.darfurstoves.org). 
JOHN