BioMass Stoves

Geoecology Energy Organisation Comes Up With Innovative Solutions

Biomass as a source for household energy has been used by mankind ever since the advent of fire. Although with industrialization there has been a shift from solid fuels to liquid and to gaseous; it is observed that vast majority of people in developing countries continue to use biomass as a source for household energy. Persistent subsidies for Kerosene and LPG over the years pumped in by the government haven’t reached 60% of the Indian population who still continue to use biomass. What is more troublesome is that nearly 60% of the people may be using biomass based energy in the most primitive and inefficient way.

GEO (Geoecology Energy Organisation), founded by Dr. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, developed many highly efficient stove models with the aim to efficiently use biomass for energy. Of these, Good Stove model was adopted by 275 families covering 70% of the population using biomass stoves.

10 million households in Andhra Pradesh continue to use about 6 Lakh tons of biomass a day. This can be reduced by 30% to 80% by adopting Good Stoves at a fraction of the cost of stoves using LPG and other petroleum based fuels. The social benefits include less smoke in homes, improved health for family members, cost efficieny, saving of time that is used in collecting firewood and improved soil health due to reduced demand of biomass which may indirectly effect the yield of crops. Moreover, Andhra Pradesh can set an example for all other Indian states, and an overall increase in efficiency may considerably cut down the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions.

There are two series of stoves designed by GEO.

AVAN (Earth) Series: These are low cost stoves. They are efficient and can be easily constructed by people using local materials.
MAGH (Cloud) Series: These are innovative stoves for those who can afford to pay a little more. Their efficiency is at least 2 times higher than Avan Series stoves. They use scientific principles and materials innovatively. Discarded CPUs, tins are enough to make some of them.

The United Nations estimates that 2 billion people a day are still cooking with open fires. Respiratory disease is the fifth-leading cause of death in the developing world, and 1.6 million people per year die from breathing wood smoke. If such initiatives as shown above spread well, this can be cut down drastically.