Blue Flame Stoves provides clean-burning ethanol cookstoves

Some 3 billion people worldwide cook their food with wood and charcoal. This contributes heavily to deforestation and results in an estimated 3.8 million deaths annually – 600 000 in Africa alone. Women and children are at the highest risk for respiratory diseases caused by indoor air pollution. It is also they who are most likely to spend hours each day collecting firewood, walking long distances at constant risk of assault, particularly in Africa.

Ethanol cookstoves are a clean, renewable cooking solution, but traditional models may be inefficient and unsafe. Manufacturing and exporting quality ethanol stoves to developing countries has been cost-prohibitive.

Redesigned ethanol stove for clean and safe cooking

Blue Flame Stoves are a clean-burning, durable and safer ethanol cookstove. The unique technology produces negligible soot and particles, with greater than 65 per cent fuel efficiency. Blue Flame Stoves run for over five hours on just one litre of ethanol, typically bioethanol produced as a by-product of sugar manufacturing.

In collaboration with Abry & Kavanagh Design, the Blue Flame Stoves company designs complete production units for cost-effective export to developing countries. The units can be assembled locally, providing value creation and work opportunities.

Concrete benefits

Cookstoves used in the developing world are responsible for about 25 per cent of the world’s black carbon emissions. The global potential for greenhouse gas emission reductions from improved cookstove projects is estimated at 1 gigaton of CO₂ equivalent per year.

Blue Flame Stoves also enable families to avoid toxic fumes and save hours of gathering wood, providing more time for education, work and family. They also help to eliminate harmful emissions and prevent deforestation.

Market potential

Patented Blue Flame Stoves are developed by the Norwegian research and design company Abry & Kavanagh Design. Over 55 000 stoves have been distributed under the Safi brand in Kenya, Madagascar and Tanzania since 2014.

The stoves are approved for Green Development’s Carbon Credit programme in Madagascar, authorised by the World Bank, and field-tested by UNCHR in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. In partnership with Green Development, Samsung Electronics has delivered over 20 000 SAFI brand stoves in Kenya.