Advocating for Stove Benchmarks

By testing stoves and measuring their emissions reliably, the stage is set to create standards or benchmarks for stove performance.

For standards/benchmarks to be effective, they must be:

• Appropriate: They must give some indication of real-world performance. They can be similar to the EPA fuel efficiency ratings for cars, where not everyone will achieve that gas efficiency, but it is reached under standard conditions.
• Replicable: The protocol needs to be general enough that it can be reasonably reproduced around the world.
• Fair and Aspirational: we can't expect to meet WHO air quality guidelines tomorrow, but we should try to improve stoves as much as possible.

Protocols and standards can help ensure optimal stove performance, generate increased funding and garner attention for stove projects worldwide.

Aprovecho was asked in 2005 by the Shell Foundation to recommend benchmarks of improved stove performance. Since then, the benchmarks have been adopted by many international organizations. These proposed benchmarks for fuel use, CO emission, PM emission, and chimney stoves can be found here: Proposed Benchmarks For Wood Burning Cooking Stoves (PDF). A fully detailed, peer-reviewed journal article will be available in the March 2010 issue of Energy for Sustainable Development.

Efforts are ongoing to create both the testing protocols and benchmarks needed for an international standard for cooking stove peformance. Many individual countries have had these standards in place for decades, but with different testing procedures and measurement and performance requirements. An international agreement could help to rapidly move forward the understanding and improvement of stoves.