Methodology for Time Savings from Improved Cookstoves (ICS)

Millions of households across the world still rely on inefficient cooking devices, such as open fire, three-stone fires, and basic charcoal cookstoves. The time required to collect fuel and cook using these inefficient stoves prevents individuals from engaging in more valuable activities such as education, income-generation, or physical and mental health maintenance, child-rearing, etc.

This methodology provides guidelines for the quantification of time savings achieved through the introduction of improved cookstoves (ICS), replacing existing inefficient cooking devices in the household, or retrofitting existing installations. The methodology measures two types of time savings: (i) time spent cutting, collecting, and carrying cooking fuel, and (ii) time spent cooking.

The time savings arise mostly for women and girls who traditionally perform the hard and time-consuming work of cutting, collecting, and carrying heavy loads of firewood over long distances and who spend long hours tending inefficient open fires while cooking over them.

Additional benefits not quantified by this methodology include positive health outcomes: 1) reduced muscle and nerve damage for women and girls from not having to frequently carry heavy loads on their heads and from reduced risk of falls and physical abuse while outside their villages; and 2) reduced personal exposure to PM2.5 and other toxins in biomass smoke.