How it works
The project will help Kenyans access healthy, energy-saving cookstoves and water treatment systems. The project leverages carbon finance to support the sale and distribution of the stoves and water treatment systems to households and institutions, such as health clinics and schools, throughout Kenya.
The project also invests carbon finance in local manufacturing capability to manufacture over 100,000 stoves every year – improving skilled labour capacity, and therefore livelihoods in Kenya.
Offsets Made it Happen
Most Kenyan households spend a significant portion of their time and income acquiring fuel for cooking and water boiling. The continual collection of firewood by Kenyan populations results in the exhaustion of wood supplies around townships in Paradigm target populations. Many people are forced to travel further from the town (upwards of 15km) to collect fuel. In the worst cases, mothers are gone for many hours, causing difficulty for children and nursing infants. In some communities, girls are also tasked with collecting firewood, a responsibility that can keep them from attending school. An efficient wood stove reduces the daily fuel consumed thus necessitating fewer trips to collect fuel per week. Efficient, improved stoves are a more sustainable, economic, and healthy way to cook.
Without the funds from carbon offsets, households and schools in Kenya would have to spend a significant amount of time, money and effort acquiring fuel to cook their food and boil their water. Carbon finance enables locals to have access to water treatment systems – so that they can have safe drinking water without using wood. Their new stoves further reduce their daily need for wood and limit the particulate matter created when cooking, creating a safer environment for the women and children who are generally exposed to the particulates while cooking.
