Combining climate resilience with market linkages, a women-led enterprise in Rajasthan’s Udaipur district has evolved a model for clean technology by supplying eco-friendly modern cookstoves to the rural households, which have saved thousands of tonnes of firewood in the tribal-dominated region. The high-efficiency cookstoves have replaced the traditional mud and stone stoves.
The community-owned Udaipur Urja Initiatives (UUI),a farmer producer company, has created a network of 400 women entrepreneurs and reached out to 65,000 households.
The single burner cookstoves, designed to cater to the needs of rural women, have been developed on the principle of efficient and complete combustion. These stoves, operating on all solid fuels such as wood, agro-residue and dry dung, minimise harmful emissions of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and particular matter. They have been certified by the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and the Bureau of Indian Standards.
The rated thermal efficiency of the cookstoves is more than 30%, which reduces the cooking time by half and cuts the requirement of firewood by almost two thirds when compared to traditional mud or three-stone based stoves. The cookstoves are at present manufactured at the plant of an organisation, Greenway Grameen, in Gujarat’s Vadodara.
