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Top Four Ways Clean Energy Alleviates Poverty

October 4, 2010 By 7 Comments
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Energy Efficient Cookstoves

These are the types of stoves recently championed by Hillary Clinton and the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. More efficient stoves will make the wood burnt last longer (thus cutting down on the need to gather firewood) and will eliminate much of the pollution which leads to respiratory diseases.

Personally, I hope it also includes solar cookers, which need nothing but the sun.

The report estimates that nearly 30m households will be able to use the cookstoves, making $24m per year in revenue.

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Filed Under: Business & Economy, Clean Energy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
About Chris Milton

Chris converted from IT Business management to journalism several years ago. Since then he's blogged and written about a whole variety of green issues, preferring to concentrate upon sustainability more than anything else.

One of mashable's top 75 green tweeters, you can follow him as @britesprite.

  • Joe

    Your reporting leaves a lot to be desired, and this post is a good example.

    “This is why a recent report . . . identifies four key clean energy strategies which should go a long way to alleviating poverty and suffering in the country.”

    Wouldn’t you have thought to let us know what those strategies are?

    Hang on a minute; I’ll have a look.

    The things the study recommended were small decentralized renewable electricity, home-scale solar electricity, solar-powered lanterns and energy-efficient cooking stoves.

    There! See how easy that is?

    • http://www.britesprite.co.uk Chris Milton

      Each of these is dealt with in depth on subsequent pages which you can navigate to using the buttons below the social bookmarking icons. I agree this is not wholly clear and will raise it with the site designers in the future.

  • http://www.britesprite.co.uk Chris Milton

    Hi Dave,

    Thank you very much for your comment. You are dead right. These initiatives will only be of use if they bring real and direct benefit to the local communities within which they are deployed. The key aspect appear to be the localised yet communal based power generation: this would help to draw people into creating and providing sustainable energy for their communities. After that, the rest would appear to flow naturally.

    However, I think, there is no use in the schemes if they’re simply going to create a new revenue stream for existing top of the pyramid multinationals.

    Is this what you mean .. what do other people think?

    Chris.

  • http://www.digivu.co.za Dave Harcourt

    I would be interested in the revenue figures in this report eg the 80 US cents a household a year for an efficient stove? or the 35 US cents a household a year for a solar lantern. Are these the amounts that flow to local poor business people and how do they alleviate the poverty of the poor users? Where does the money to buy the lantern come from?

  • http://silviaokaliova.blogspot.com sharm lover

    the cleanerst energy and average is the light into our soul

  • http://www.epiphanysws.com Ron Pettengill

    One thing you left out was the use of renewables to purify water. Access to clean water is a problem today for over 1 billion people around the world. Given the world population growth coupled with diminishing oil stocks requires the ability to convert seawater to fresh. The only sustainable way to do that is the use of solar power.

    • http://www.britesprite.co.uk Chris Milton

      That’s a very good point Ron: water is *the* fundamental requirement for life and dignity, yet there is no mention in the report of it (other than for use in hydro projects).

      I wonder if I should let my cynicism have free rein and suggest that providing water isn’t a viable business proposition because many see its provision as something which should be free at the point of use?