Breath of Fresh Air

“The stove passes routine testing by standard Kitchen Performance Tests, and the wood savings are verified. Support and interest in the stove in rural communities in Guatemala are overwhelming to the point where it requires no marketing, the growing participation is from word of mouth.

After families get a cookstove, they receive three follow-up visits to ensure the stove was installed and working correctly. This project uses Salesforce CRM to collect usage and maintenance data to identify and solve issues quickly. As a nonprofit, 100% of the proceeds from carbon sales are applied to stove production in Guatemala without administrative or operating costs for the staff supporting the project from the United States.”

—Sid Yadav, Director of Project Research

Project Type: Technology-based Avoidance/Reduction

Carbon Standard: Gold Standard

Vintage: 2021

Additionality: Carbon offset sales support project costs from stove production to stove installation; without the project, traditional cooking methods would prevail.

Permanence: Because the stove requires ½ the amount of wood compared to traditional stoves wood use is permanently reduced.

Site Visit: December 2023

Local Guatemala call the stoves Dos Por Tres, slang for, “In an Instant.” Instantly, these stoves save wood, save time, eliminate toxic smoke from the household, and help the planet by saving miles of forests and reducing carbon emissions by about 3 tonnes per stove per year. To date, the project has avoided the emissions of more than 2 million metric tonnes of CO2 and equivalent gases (mtCO2e).

Cooking in Central America relies on traditional stoves that burn significant amounts of local wood and emit smoke into the home. The stoves are on for eight hours a day and when cooks stand directly over stoves to cook the family tortillas, they breath the smoke that covers the kitchen roofs and walls in soot.

Installed directly in the home, the improved cookstoves are built from locally available cement or adobe bricks. The stove features a thermodynamic rocket elbow design that provides more direct heat to the food with less wood, so food is cooked faster. Families save money by purchasing less wood or save time by gathering less wood, rid the house of smoke, cook faster and, in a Dos por Tres, help save our planet.

• Constructed 210,000 stoves to date, benefitting 874,000 people.
• Monitors each location with GPS & follow-up visits and stores the information in a Salesforce database.
• Saves the equivalent of ~5-9 trees per year per stove or 1.6 metric tonnes of firewood per year.
• Reduces carbon monoxide and particulate matter in the home by 79%.
• Provides 18,000 hours of stove maintenance training and fuel reduction tips each year.
• Created 22 microenterprises and 170 jobs to date.
• Families do not buy a stove; they co-invest in one. They provide bricks and mortar, the project provides construction, know-how, and specialized stove parts

• Working in Guatemala can be dangerous due to corruption, drugs, and human trafficking making some areas difficult to access.
• Hurricanes and torrential rains continue to impact build schedules each year.
• In Guatemala, the decision to get a cookstove is usually made by the man of the home, who may not think it is important. This restricts stove distribution to families in need.

• I am grateful to the Project for the stove. The plancha heats evenly. There isn’t any smoke now and it cooks fast. – Cleotilde Martinez – 4 family members
• I am happy and cheerful because I save firewood; I do everything with a couple of sticks. – Aurelia Lopez – 3 family members
• I’m grateful and willing that if the stove were to be ruined, I’d buy it or make it. Because my eyes hurt when cooking on a traditional stove, now I don’t even wear glasses. – Nelis Aleyla Figeroa Funes – 4 family members