20/11/2018

Shaping the market for clean cookstoves in the Mekong Region

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There are a staggering 65 million people in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos who still depend on wood and charcoal to cook their daily meals.

The use of woodfuels for cooking has detrimental impacts on local forest resources, and also releases greenhouse gases that harm our global climate. There is also a huge and growing health impact from poor air quality caused by traditional biomass cooking – which mostly affects women and children, and doesn't get as much attention yet as it should.

Over the past 4 years, SNV has been working toward developing markets for a new generation of cleaner and healthier biomass cookstoves in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos through our ‘Market Acceleration for Advanced Clean Cookstoves in the Greater Mekong Sub-region’ project, funded by our partner Energising Development (EnDev).

Now that the project is coming to an end, we are inspired to share some of the unique experiences we gained while making this new generation of cookstoves available in the region for the very first time. .

Read an interview with our expert Dennis Barbian, who managed the project and shares some of the project’s successes and learnings – for example how we assisted the budding industry for biomass gasifier cookstoves in Vietnam to grow, and how we engaged the private sector in Cambodia to start a new cookstoves market from scratch.

Learn how our project assisted Vietnamese cookstove producer SolarServe to expand their business in the region and how Vietnamese cookstove user Mr Hoa moved from a charcoal stove to a rice husk-powered one and has seen multiple benefits, including savings of 66 dollars a week.

See our assessment of the job creation impact of the project in Cambodia, find out how Cambodian stove user Ms Ry Na benefited from having access to a high-quality cookstove, and learn how we came to create a market for advanced biomass cookstoves in Cambodia in the first place.

We also introduce you to other individuals in Cambodia and Vietnam who have switched to clean cookstoves and who outline their own personal experiences with the technology.

As we’re looking back at a unique set of experiences in the large-scale dissemination of these so-called ‘higher-tier’ cookstoves, we also hope to inform other practitioners and contribute to the body of knowledge about this new technology – with important insights on technology performance, durability, and consumer acceptability.

If you are a practitioner who is keen to understand how behaviour change interventions can influence advanced cookstove adoption, be sure to read about our multi-year stove adoption study. And if you are a practitioner who works with results-based financing approaches and would like to get a glimpse into our project’s approach to RBF verification, be sure to check out this handy picture story. Of course, you can access our complete library of news items, blog posts and downloadable content on our project site.

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Read an interview with our expert Dennis Barbian

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Find out how Ms. Ry Na benefited from having access to a high-quality cookstove

See below for more testimonials and a blog from our partner Solar Serve.

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Learn how our project assisted Vietnamese cookstove producer SolarServe

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Meet Mr Hoa, a clean cookstove convert in Vietnam

See below research undertaken into the job creation impact and the influence of behaviour change interventions into the adoption of clean cookstoves.

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See our assessment of the job creation impact of our project in Cambodia

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Understand how behavior change interventions influence cookstove adoption

Read more about how we verify our results-based financing mechanism and why we came to create a market for advanced biomass cookstoves.

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Learn how the verification for results-based financing works

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How we came to create a market for ABCs in Cambodia