India: High-tech sensors to monitor low-tech cook stoves

High-tech wireless sensors that measure cook stove usage can make cleaner cooking technologies more affordable for the global poor, a study finds.

The study, jointly conducted by researchers from the US-based Nexleaf Analytics and the University of California San Diego and the India-based The Energy and Resources Institute, supports climate financing efforts to encourage the use of improved cook stoves that ensure better combustion and hence, lesser pollution.

Globally, more than three billion people burn solid biomass in inefficient stoves, producing a toxic combination of particles from incomplete combustion of fuels brimming with black organic carbon. Biomass-burning accounts for about 40 per cent of global black carbon emissions — half of it from rural India. Further exposure to these particles indoors is estimated to be responsible for 3.5 million deaths every year.