Fuelwood Use and Carbon Emission Reduction of Improved Biomass Cook Stoves; Evidence from Kitchen Performance Test in Tigray, Ethiopia

Abstract In Ethiopia, biomass is the main form of fuel approximately for 92% of the population. Currently, several strategies were designed to reduce fuelwood consumption and greenhouse gases (GHG) emission by implementing improved cooking stoves (ICS). Nevertheless, the adoption of ICSs has been very slow. Therefore, this study were conducted to assess the performance of ICS (“Mirt” and Tikikil”) on fuelwood consumption and greenhouse gas emission (GHG) in the kitchens of real households using kitchen performance test (KPT) methods. To select the study households (HH), both cross-sectional and longitudinal study designs were used. The study indicated that there were significant differences (p < 0.05) between the use of improved and traditional cooking stoves in total and per capita wood consumption. The use of “Mirt” and “Tikikil” than the traditional stove reduced the household wood consumption by 35 % (438 kg/ year) and 18% (185 kg/ year), respectively. Likewise, adopting of these ICS stoves lead to decrease of 0.65 and 0.27 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO 2 e) per stove per year. This finding may have implication on adoption of ICS technology is important on reducing CO 2 emission, forest degradation and household workloads.