Shell cooks up cleaner future with $6m donation for global clean stove initiative

Royal Dutch Shell plc

Royal Dutch Shell plc. (Shell) today pledged $6 million to support a global initiative to prevent deaths and cut greenhouse gas emissions caused by the smoke from traditional cooking stoves. The toxic fumes from open fires and traditional burning stoves, the main tool for heating and cooking in the developing world, currently cause 1.9 million premature deaths from respiratory diseases every year, according to the World Health Organization. They also create unnecessary CO2 emissions. The internationally recognised most viable solution is to encourage cleaner cooking stoves, which require significantly less fuel and reduce emissions.

"Indoor air pollution is one of the most significant energy poverty issues facing the developing world," said Peter Voser, Chief Executive Officer of Royal Dutch Shell plc. "With three billion people worldwide using open fires or traditional stoves in their homes, this initiative is a step forward in making a huge and tangible difference to their health and environment. So I would urge others to support this initiative a clean burning cooking stove for each home isn't that much to ask."

According to Vikram Singh Mehta, Chairman, Shell Group of Companies in India, "Indoor Air Pollution claims as many as 400,000 lives in India every year, most of whom are women and children. This Global Alliance has its roots in the efforts of many entities across the world including Shell Foundation's efforts in different parts of India to promote awareness about the dangers of Indoor Air Pollution and the benefits of improved cooking stoves in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh in collaboration with stove manufacturers and micro-finance institutions."

Shell's donation, staged over three years, will be the largest private contribution backing the work of the newly launched Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), a public-private initiative to support the large-scale use of clean burning domestic stoves in developing countries. Launched today by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting, GACC aims for an additional 100 million homes, roughly 20% of the affected population, to have an efficient cooking stove by 2020. The annual CO2 reduction for each energy-efficient stove is approximately 1.5* tonnes, so the cumulative effect of 100 million new stoves would be approximately 150 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

Manufacturers of clean stoves currently face difficulties getting their products to the people who need them, and with no internationally recognised global standards, more needs to be done to let people and communities know about the dangers they are facing. Shell's commitment will be tackling these problems, specifically by:helping to develop global standards and stove testing protocols, to ensure customers get a quality product that has been approved and tested on the ground in each local market;enhancing routes to market, tackling the issues of affordability and accessibility; assisting with development of innovative financing mechanisms that would enable manufacturers to potentially benefit from carbon-credits, and;raising awareness of the health and environmental risks caused by the smoke from inefficient cooking stoves.Shell cooks up cleaner future with $6m donation for global clean stove initiativeBy: navneet

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