The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), along with other founding governments and non-governmental organizations, launched the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA) at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002. USEPA's funding and leadership has focused on recruiting other Partners, convening global Partnership Forums (2003, 2005, 2007, 2009), sponsoring capacity building workshops, developing Partnership communication tools (e.g. the Partnership website, the PCIA Bulletin, and fact sheets), and supporting pilot projects. Additionally, the USEPA is to address home cooking and heating practices and is supporting the direct exchange of experiences among researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, project implementers, and program directors.
Contact Information
Our Focus
In 2003 - 2006, the USEPA supported 10 pilot projects (jointly funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the USEPA) in Asia (China and India), Africa (Mauritania, Nigeria, and Uganda) and Latin America (Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico). The goal of the pilots was to demonstrate effective approaches for increasing the use of clean, reliable, affordable, efficient, and safe home cooking and heating practices that reduce women and children's exposure to indoor air pollution. The results of these pilot projects included: 1) reduced exposure to indoor air pollution in more than 30,000 households, serving approximately 160,000 people; 2) improved awareness of the dangers of indoor air pollution and cooking alternatives to more than 220,000 households, serving approximately one million people; 3) more than 200 local artisans and entrepreneurs starting their own clean cook stove production and distribution businesses; and 4) test, improve and market a number of clean technologies, including improved stoves, retained heat cookers or hay boxes, biogas systems, solar ovens and methanol stoves. More information on individual pilots can be found here. Click here to learn about EPA grantee, HELPS International's work with Retained Heat Cookers in Guatemala. Click here to learn about EPA grantee, Trees, Water & People's work with stove commercialization in Honduras.
USEPA is currently funding eight scale-up projects (China, Nepal, Pakistan, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Bolivia).
Our Experience And Interest In The Four PCIA Central Focus Areas
The USEPA, in collaboration with other Partners, is conducting social marketing workshops to assist organizations in developing action plans to incorporate social and cultural norms into household energy programs to increase the use of improved fuels and technologies.
The USEPA, in collaboration with other Partners, sponsors regional workshops to assist pilot projects and other organizations in developing a sustainable market for their fuel/technology. You can download the proceedings from past workshops (Mexico, Uganda) at ---
The USEPA, in collaboration with other Partners, sponsors technical training on improving stove design and performance. Training assists a wide range of organizations that are developing and promoting improved stoves throughout the world. The USEPA sponsored a workshop with Engineers in Technical Humanitarian Organizations for Service (ETHOS), in February 2004, with eighty technical experts to begin developing guidelines for clean, affordable, reliable, efficient and safe cooking and heating practices. The USEPA is working through the Partnership to ensure that the guidelines for the design and performance of improved home cooking and heating technology are refined and then widely disseminated.
USEPA, in collaboration with the World Health Organization and other Partners, has developed a catalog of methods for assessing health effects and exposure to indoor air pollution from home cooking and heating practices. You can download the Catalog at ---to document the impact of your interventions. The USEPA and the World Health Organization have sponsored regional workshops to build the capacity of pilot projects and other organizations to conduct air pollution monitoring to document the impact of their interventions. You can download the proceedings from past workshops (Guatemala, Sri Lanka, South Africa) at ----. Upcoming workshops will be announced on the Partnership website.
Relevant Publications or Studies
Under a cooperative agreement with the USEPA, Winrock International has produced a number of country overviews on household energy and health and publishes the quarterly PCIA Bulletin. The USEPA has also developed the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air Factsheet in a number of languages. All of these materials are available at PCIA_Resources
Our Contribution to the Partnership
Through its pilot project grants, the USEPA evaluates successful approaches and models for conducting outreach and education, developing local businesses and markets, and monitoring exposure reductions. Goals include integrating these components and scaling up projects that promote improved cooking and heating practices, are more efficient, meet users' needs, reduce exposures, and can be produced locally. USEPA sponsors in-depth technical training in community outreach and education, stove development and performance, market development and IAP monitoring.
