The Future
Currently, Project Gaia is promoting the CleanCook stove as the best available ethanol stove technology, although we are very willing to promote other clean-burning, efficient and safe technologies, particularly those that are locally manufactured.
Well-designed alcohol stoves and alcohol fuels provide a win-win solution for the future. They reduce dangerous pollutants in the kitchen, cut down on greenhouse emissions globally, and save woodfuel by making use of agri-wastes instead.
When one dirty, polluting, stove is replaced by a clean one, a healthy environment is created for a family. When many traditional stoves are displaced by cleaner stoves using efficient fuels, a healthier world is created. We can measure this,
and you can help make it happen.
Greenhouse gases and soot (black carbon) from millions of traditional solid-fuel stoves are creating much of the world’s global warming. Soot is believed to cause around 30% of arctic melting, and much of the soot comes from the 2.5 billion smoky kitchen stoves used in communities that lack better alternatives.
Ethanol, by contrast, is made from waste products from crops like sugar cane. It is purchased nearby to where it is produced, thus providing people with a reliable energy supply and eliminating the costs of importation and transport associated with fossil fuels. When burned in an efficient stove, emissions are virtually nonexistent.
Particularly where feed stocks are grown, Gaia believes that carbon finance will provide the funds necessary to make the CleanCook stove affordable to any poor family, particularly in areas where feedstocks are grown.
As ethanol and methanol become increasingly mainstream fuels, Gaia may add other ethanol technologies to its initiatives, such as ethanol-powered refrigerators and lighting.