Avoided emissions of a fuel-efficient biomass cookstove dwarf embodied emissions

D.L. Wilson, D.R. Talancon, R.L. Winslow, X. Linares and A.J. Gadgil

Development Engineering, 2016, vol. 1, issue C, 45-52

Abstract: Three billion people cook their food on biomass-fueled fires. This practice contributes to the anthropogenic radiative forcing. Fuel-efficient biomass cookstoves have the potential to reduce CO2-equivalent emissions from cooking, however, cookstoves made from modern materials and distributed through energy-intensive supply chains have higher embodied CO2-equivalent than traditional cookstoves. No studies exist examining whether lifetime emissions savings from fuel-efficient biomass cookstoves offset embodied emissions, and if so, by what margin. This paper is a complete life cycle inventory of “The Berkeley–Darfur Stove,” disseminated in Sudan by the non-profit Potential Energy. We estimate the embodied CO2-equivalent in the cookstove associated with materials, manufacturing, transportation, and end-of-life is 17kg of CO2-equivalent. Assuming a mix of 55% non-renewable biomass and 45% renewable biomass, five years of service, and a conservative 35% reduction in fuel use relative to a three-stone fire, the cookstove will offset 7.5 tonnes of CO2-equivalent. A one-to-one replacement of a three-stone fire with the cookstove will save roughly 440 times more CO2-equivalent than it “costs” to create and distribute. Over its five-year life, we estimate the total use-phase emissions of the cookstove to be 13.5 tonnes CO2-equivalent, and the use-phase accounts for 99.9% of cookstove life cycle emissions. The dominance of use-phase emissions illuminate two important insights: (1) without a rigorous program to monitor use-phase emissions, an accurate estimate of life cycle emissions from biomass cookstoves is not possible, and (2) improving a cookstove's avoided emissions relies almost exclusively on reducing use-phase emissions even if use-phase reductions come at the cost of substantially increased non-use-phase emissions.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352728515300464

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:deveng:v:1:y:2016:i:c:p:45-52

DOI: 10.1016/j.deveng.2016.01.001

Access Statistics for this article

Development Engineering is currently edited by Paul J. GERTLER

More articles in Development Engineering from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().