Darfur Stoves Project

To ensure our clients continue to use and benefit from our products, we involve users in designing technologies that are locally appropriate. We also provide ongoing technical assistance to our local collaborators.

User-Centered Design

Listening to the experts: the women who use our stoves
The user is the only person who can say definitively whether a product is functional and will continue to meet their needs in the future. Without the input from these experts, the Berkeley-Darfur Stove would not achieve its objective of providing stoves that fit smoothly into the existing culture and needs of Darfuri displaced persons. This consultative approach to design ensures widespread adoption of our improved technologies, laying the foundation for a sustainable solution. Regular field evaluations, performance tests, and feedback from the users are essential to the sustainability of the Darfur Stove Project.

Technical Assistance Building the capacity of our collaborators to provide improved technologies to those in need We invest considerable energy and resources in building the capacity of our collaborators because they employ and train our local workers while also manage the distribution of the stoves. Sustainable Action Group provides jobs for Darfuri displaced persons within the stove workshop and provide them with new, marketable skills. Keeping costs down, investing in the communities in which we operate, and improving the skill-base of the local labor force for the future helps make our project sustainable and productive for all involved.

Sustainable Financing

Using carbon credits to help fund the project in the long-term
We are carefully studying and planning the use of carbon financing as an exciting source of financial sustainability for our operations. With progress being made in establishing an international climate regime, a global market for reduced global warming emissions, and better monitoring technologies, we will soon be able to reliably quantify fuel savings and pollution reduction from our cookstoves. Donations are and will continue to be the bedrock of our ability to deliver our services to the people of Darfur. However, creative financing techniques, like carbon credits, enhance our financial sustainability as well of the health of the planet overall.

What is a carbon credit?
A project earns carbon credits by preventing the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. To calculate these credits, you first estimate the amount of greenhouse gases per year that would have been emitted to the atmosphere in absence of the project, usually by measuring the amount of gases emitted in the recent past. You then measure the annual emissions after the project is implemented. The difference between before and after the project is the amount saved, and the number of carbon credits earned is based on that amount. Every metric ton of CO2 (or gasses with an equivalent greenhouse effect) prevented from entering the atmosphere each year generates one carbon credit.

Because the cost of lowering a carbon footprint varies among groups, a group which can cheaply reduce CO2 emissions may sell their carbon credits to a group who would have to pay a higher cost to reduce their own CO2 emissions. In the end, the same amount of CO2 is reduced, and each group has some sort of monetary gain.

How can stoves benefit from carbon credit financing?
Since one stove has the potential to save two metric tons of CO2 emissions annually, each stove has the ability to sell two carbon credits every year. The money from the sale of carbon credits can greatly reduce the original cost of purchase as well as offset future fuel cost. This has the possibility to create additional financing, affordable stoves, and lower emissions, all while saving money for the investor.

To learn more about the environmental impact of the Berkeley-Darfur Stove, see our impact page.