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    • This paper is one of the first analyses of

    2018-10-29

    This paper is one of the first analyses of the life cycle CO2-e impact of a fuel-efficient mao inhibitors cookstove that is being produced, disseminated, and used at a scale of tens of thousands of units. We have selected to study the Berkeley–Darfur Stove (BDS) disseminated in Darfur by the non-profit Potential Energy (PE), formerly named The Darfur Stoves Project. We analyze this stove as an exemplar to obtain insights into various life phase emissions of similar advanced cookstoves. The situation in Sudan is comparable to that in much of the developing world both in terms of choice and quantity of fuel used for daily cooking. 56% of the Sudanese population uses wood as cooking fuel (Legros et al., 2009) with a daily consumption of 5–8kg per household, both in line with developing world averages, especially in Africa (Fig. 3) (Hutton et al., 2006). Fig. 2 demonstrates that the BDS is a good choice for this analysis because its thermal efficiency and CO2-e emission reduction capability are comparable to those of other peer naturally drafted wood-burning cookstoves (Jetter et al., 2012). As of June 2015, PE has disseminated about 47,000 BDS units in Darfur; the scale of BDS dissemination allows us to estimate the impact of a cookstove program operating at large scale. Given the aforementioned factors, our life cycle analysis of the BDS is likely to be generalizable to other cookstoves with similar design, dissemination scales, materials, fuels, lifetimes, and frequencies of use. Because the BDS\'s design and intended impact are similar to other cookstove programs, we intend the conclusions of this study to be applicable to other cookstove programs worldwide such as Envirofit, GIZ, Cookstoves for Africa, Project Gaia, UGASTOVE, and EcoZoom.
    The life of the Berkeley–Darfur Stove The BDS is manufactured at Shri Hari Industries (SHI) in Mumbai, India. In order to reduce manufacturing cost and improve quality, BDS parts are manufactured from sheet metal in India, shipped as unfolded flat kits to Sudan, and assembled by internally displaced persons at a workshop in Al-Fashir, Darfur. Because Sudan lacks access to materials and sophisticated manufacturing facilities, the BDS is significantly less expensive and of higher quality when manufactured in India. After manufacturing operations, BDS flat kits are trucked to the port in Mumbai and shipped 4400km to Sudan. In Sudan, Sustainable Action Group (SAG), one of PE\'s on-the-ground partners, loads the flat kits onto a truck and transports them 1800km from Port Sudan to Al-Fashir, Darfur (Fig. 5). In Al-Fashir, PE and SAG have setup a 50m2 assembly shop that employs 12 people and can build 160 stoves per day (Fig. 7). Sheet metal components are folded into their final geometry using mostly human-powered tools. An air compressor is used to operate riveting equipment, but its contribution to manufacturing-phase emissions is assumed to be negligible. Finally each stove undergoes a quality control check and serialization before it is trucked to customers in camps, peri-urban towns, and villages. The BDS has an expected lifetime of five years. Surveys have shown that these stoves displace traditional cooking fires and are being used up to three times per day for the five-year service life of the stove (Darfur Stoves Project, 2011). It is believed that the end of a BDS\'s life comes when its steel components have corroded to such a degree that the stove is no longer functional.
    Impact
    Results and discussion Fig. 11 and Table 4 show the dramatic difference in CO2-equivalent emissions between the use-phase and all other life cycle phases of the BDS. Regardless of NRB:RB ratio, non-use-phase CO2-e impact is more than three orders of magnitude less than the use-phase. In the most realistic case of a 55:45 ratio of NRB to RB, the use-phase represents 850 times greater CO2-e than all other life cycle phases combined. Fig. 12 demonstrates the difference in five-year life cycle CO2-e emissions between the TSF and BDS assuming a NRB:RB ratio of 55:45. Using the assumptions in this study, the BDS has a statistically significantly lower lifetime CO2-e impact than the TSF (p=0.05). The embodied emissions of the BDS associated with all non-use-phase emissions account for only 0.1% of the cookstove\'s life cycle emissions. Compared to the TSF, an up-front investment of 17kg CO2 in manufacturing and delivering the BDS to customers will mitigate approximately 7.5 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions over the 5-year lifetime of the cookstove. In five years, the CO2-e savings of the BDS vs. TSF are roughly 440 times the embodied CO2 in the BDS.