The United States Commitment to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves: Year One Progress Report

As a founding partner of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, the United States announced an unprecedented commitment to this issue and to solving it at a global scale: more than $50 million over the first five years. Every U.S. federal agency is meeting or exceeding its commitments towards diplomacy, applied research, capacity building, stove testing, and field implementation and evaluation. At the one year mark, the United States announced up to an additional $55 million for the Alliance, bringing the total commitment to up to $105 million.

State Department/USAID – $9.02 million: Under the leadership of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the State Department has undertaken a wide range of diplomatic and technical activities to advance the Alliance and the cookstoves sector. Key accomplishments include:

• Partnerships with countries across the globe, including Burkina Faso, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Finland, Ireland, Kenya, Lesotho, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Spain.
• Partnerships with new Alliance private sector partners Dow-Corning, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry.
• Appointing actress Julia Roberts and chef José Andrés to serve as Alliance Ambassadors.
• Hosting an event in Chennai to raise public awareness of cookstoves in India and across the globe.
• Funding the first-ever field assessment in Africa to better understand the relationship between climate change and improved stoves.
• Initiating a program in Haiti on converting commercial vendors from charcoal to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), creating an LPG regulatory regime and supply chain, and promoting improved biomass stoves.
• Beginning a global health program to address indoor air pollution within the context of household environmental health.

EPA – $6 million: EPA is drawing on the expertise, lessons learned, and partner network that it has developed in launching and leading the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA). Key accomplishments include:

• Holding a cookstoves event with Administrator Jackson in Ethiopia to raise awareness of the issue and highlight local innovative solutions.
• Hosting the 5^th Biennial PCIA Forum in Lima, Peru – the world’s largest ever cookstoves event – and preparing to integrate the PCIA and its network of more than 500 partners working in 115 countries with the Alliance.
• Disseminating more than 2.4 million clean and efficient stoves, PCIA Partners reduced exposure to indoor air pollution for more than 14 million people.
• Leading global efforts related to cookstove testing in the lab and field through an extensive, independent laboratory testing exercise, organizing regional capacity building stove testing and performance workshops in Rwanda and Laos, and sponsored in-field stove testing research projects, in Nepal, India, and Peru.

NIH – $24.7 million: NIH is supporting ongoing research and research training projects, as well as new efforts to develop improved measuring devices, expand epidemiologic studies and conduct clinical trials. Key accomplishments include:

• An NIH-led trans-U.S. Government workshop that was the largest and most comprehensive forum to review the health impacts of indoor air pollution (IAP) and to determine health research priorities for the cookstoves sector. The outcomes from this workshop will inform the Alliance about the research opportunities that dovetail with its mission of demonstrating that large scale implementation of advanced stoves and fuels will save lives around the world.
• Support for health research studies at several NIH Institutes and Centers targeting respiratory, cancer, and cardiovascular risks, as well as birth outcomes such as mortality and low birth weight associated with the use of cookstoves.

CDC– $1 million: CDC is evaluating cookstove programs to better understand their public health benefits. Key accomplishments include:

• A project in Kenya to evaluate improved stoves and their impact on air quality and children’s health, in collaboration with the World Health Organization.
• Development of a field training program for field research related to cookstoves.
• Performance evaluation and testing of an innovative, commercial stove.
• Technical support to the Indian Council of Medical Research for the development of four cookstoves health research projects.

DOE – $ 12.5 million: DOE will conduct research aimed at addressing technical barriers to the development of low emission, high efficiency cookstoves through activities in areas such as combustion, heat transfer, and materials development.

• DOE convened a global workshop of cookstove researchers and implementers to gather input about pathways forward in designing affordable biomass cookstoves with high efficiency and low emissions. This workshop will inform DOE’s technology investments beginning in FY2012, depending on Congressional appropriations.

Alliance Progress: Thanks in large part to the United States commitment and with the leadership of Secretary Clinton, in its first year the Alliance has positioned the cookstoves sector to achieve unprecedented global progress by:

• Launching key initial efforts to set global standards, analyze key geographic markets, set indoor air quality guidelines, and test a wide range of stove-fuel combinations;
• Convening more than 350 global experts across nine working groups to identify priority investments to transform this sector and lead to global-scale success;
• Raising international awareness of the urgency of the issue through targeted press events and high-level speaking engagements;
• Identifying high-profile ambassadors of the Alliance;
• Building strong partnerships and securing the participation of more than 175 partners, including 20 country partners; and
• Securing close to $80 million in financial commitments.