Potential Energy works with local enterprises in poverty-stricken countries to manufacture and distribute household technologies, such as clean cookstoves, that save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women and protect the environment. Potential Energy’s first initiative, the Darfur Stoves Project, improves the safety and livelihoods of women by providing fuel-efficient cookstoves which reduce firewood requirements, limit women’s exposure to violence during firewood collection and decrease the use of money and food rations to obtain fuel. Potential Energy plans to develop a portfolio of clean technologies for the world's poorest people using the same user-centered design and partnership approach that has led to the success of its Darfur Stoves Project.
Contact Information
By the end of 2011, Potential Energy and our current partners in Darfur (Oxfam America, Plan International and the Sudanese organization, Sustainable Action Group) distributed over 20,000 Berkeley-Darfur Stoves in total. We plan to distribute at least 15,000 additional stoves in 2012 and initiate a pilot project with the Berkeley-Ethiopia Stove in Ethiopia.
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
Our approach has been to specifically tailor our product to meet the needs of women in Darfur. We modified the Indian Tara stove, adapting it for the type of food, pot shapes, windy conditions and sandy terrain in Darfur. At the end of our initial pilot test with 50 women, all 50 chose to purchase a prototype of the Berkeley-Darfur Stove for $5.
We chose to adopt a user-centered design approach based not only on our own conviction, but also based on the observations of our initial fact-finding team that other fuel-efficient stoves that had been distributed in Darfur were not valued by the women. For example, our team saw some stoves being used for storage or refuse rather than for cooking.
We would like the Berkeley-Darfur Stove to be sold to users at least above the price of scrap metal. We have found this to be a difficult proposition in a humanitarian crisis setting like Darfur, because people are used to receiving aid for free. We are still testing out the potential for market development in this setting.
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We are currently working with our partners, Oxfam America and the Sudanese NGO, Sustainable Action Group (SAG) to conduct a follow-up survey of the stove recipients who were interviewed in our baseline survey last fall. Stay tuned for updates!
Relevant Publications or Studies
None noted
Our Contribution to the Partnership
We would like to exchange ideas, share learning and collaborate with other members.
