Phasing out Cookstoves a ‘Win-Win’ for Climate and Health, Study Shows
by Roz Pidcock (Carbon Brief) Replacing traditional wood and coal-burning cookstoves with cleaner technology could trim nearly a tenth of a degree from global temperature and save more than 10 million lives by 2050.
This is according to a new study that looks at the benefits for climate and human health of reducing emissions from cookstoves in more than 100 countries worldwide.
The authors, from the University of Colorado and Dalhousie University in Canada, published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Health warning
Over 3 billion people – around two fifths of the world’s population – cook their food on open fires using solid fuels like wood, animal dung, coal and biomass as fuel.
This traditional way of cooking releases methane and CO2, both potent greenhouse gases. Past studies suggest burning wood fuel is responsible for approximately 2% of global CO2 emissions.
Burning solid fuels has huge side effects for public health, too. Poor indoor air quality leads to 4.3 million premature deaths per year, according to the World Health Organisation. Emissions from poorly ventilated residential cookstoves are thought to be responsible for around 370,000-500,000 of those premature adult deaths each year.
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Black carbon, or soot, stays around in the atmosphere for days to weeks, giving rise to its label as a ‘short-lived climate pollutant’, or SLCP.
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According to the study’s results, phasing out traditional cookstoves over the next 20-years could cool global surface temperature by approximately 0.08C by 2050, largely a result of cutting black carbon and other SLCPs.
Towards the second half of the century, we start to feel the effects of cutting CO2 and the cooling effect on global surface temperature grows to 0.12C. READ MORE
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