Project Detail

Rice Husk Stove Promotion Project.

Southern and Eastern parts of Bara district are one of the most firewood deficit areas of Nepal. Due to the firewood crisis, local people are forced to burn agricultural residues, cattle dung and fallen leaves to meet their fuel requirement for cooking and heating purposes. Excessive use of the biomass has resulted in extreme carbon emission from the local households, sometimes resulting in fire hazards. Traditionally, women are mainly responsible and therefore involved in collecting fuel sources that has added an additional drudgery to them. Their time for searching livelihood options are also engaged turning in to living with many difficulties particularly for poor families.

Realizing the fact, GEF SGP supported Project introduced rice husk stove as substitute of the traditional fuel and introduced it in Purainiya VDC of Bara district in 2007. The technology was well accepted by the local beneficiaries and stakeholders appreciated it very much as well. With the small available resources, the project was successful in distributing 230 stoves and also demonstrated to produce locally. The stoves become very popular and started to larger scale production in Bhairahawa (west Nepal).

The project aim to further expand the production of ricehusk stove with some modification in its design, raw material. It will also try to promote private manufactures by providing training and basic manufacturing equipment.

Project Snapshot

Grantee:

Nature and Human Development Centre

Country:

Nepal

Area Of Work:

Climate Change Mitigation

Operational Phase:

OP5- Y1 (Jul 11 - Jun 12)

Grant Amount:

US$ 14,960.00

Co-Financing Cash:

US$ 41,525.00

Co-Financing in-Kind:

Project Number:

NEP/SGP/OP5/CORE/CC/11/07

Start Date:

12/2011

End Date:

12/2012

Status:

Satisfactorily Completed

Project Characteristics and Results

Replication of project activities

Installation of rice husk stove is not only replicated in Nepal but also widely in India.

Emphasis on Sustainable Livelihoods

Since cooking in rice husk stove is a money saving endevour,and also contribute to positively with health of women and children, it also address the livelihood.

Notable Community Participation

Since the stove users are local people, their participation will be significant.

Gender Focus

The rice husk stove will ease women?s drudgery as they do not have to collect firewood. Since cooking in rice husk stove is easy and required less time, their workload will be decreased.

Capacity - Building Component

The training component include rice husk manufacturing training to manufacturers.

Project Results

Fourteen selected rural entrepreneurs were provided with training on manufacturing of rice husk stoves (RHS) and support for acquiring some equipment associated with it. Then a total of 6 RHS manufacturing units were officially registered in the District Small and Cottage Industry Development Office and they have started producing rice husk stoves. RHS were demonstrated in 20 high schools of the district, 5 local fair and festivals were organized, 2000 IEC materials were distributed and 6 hoarding boards were erected for the dissemination of RHS technologies. By January 2013, these units were successful in selling to local villagers a total of 3,775 rice husk stoves in a very affordable price (USD11 per stove). These stoves have numerous benefits: they decrease indoor air pollution, CO2 emission and use of firewood, save time for the household women member to collect firewood, are easier to use, affordable and efficient.

The financial transaction while selling 3,775 units of stove is around USD41,525 (average cost of stove USD11). Considering 40% of profit, the 6 manufacturers made a net profit of USD16,610. Baseline data collected by the project showed that an average household needed 5 kg of firewood per day and annually spent USD288 in purchasing firewood to cook food. But with the rice-husk stove, they were spending only USD15 per annum to purchase and operate the rice husk. In this way, a single household saved USD262 per year. (Cost of rice-husk stove USD11 also deducted). This means 3,775 households saved a total of USD989,050 per year.

It was further revealed that 5 Kg of firewood is replaced by 2 Kg of rice husk stove. 5 kg of firewood would emit 7.03 Kg of CO2 (CO2 coefficient 1.406) where as 2 Kg of rice-husk stove would emit 2.6 kg of CO2 (CO2 coefficient 1.2874). This means a single rice-husk stove would save emission of 4.43 Kg of CO2 per day. Thus 3775 stoves saved emission of 6104 tonnes of CO2 per year in the atmosphere.
Beside these, the rice husk reduced the vulnerability of fire, reduced the workload of women and improved the health of women and children in the project area.

An efficient rice-husk stove in low land Terai is a boon for women members. It reduces the workload of women, basically collecting firewood which is considered as women?s job. It has reduced the firewood collection time, improved the health condition of women and children and also reduced the cooking time. Considering average household members as 6.38 in Bara and half of them are women, the installation of 3775 stoves has served 12,042 women members.

While promoting Rice-husk stove, instead of applying subsidy mechanism, the private entrepreneurs were trained to manufacture the stove in bulk so as to reduce per unit cost. Since the stove is affordable and efficient, nearly 4000 stoves were sold and are in use. As this is a win-win situation for both customers and producers, this enterprise and installation of more rice husk stoves will continue in the future as well.

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Indicators

Empowerment

Number of CBOs / NGOs formed or registered through the SGP project 6

Livehood

Total monetary value (US dollars) of clean energy services provided to project participants and / or community as a whole (in the climate change focal area) 4000

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