Protecting Health and Climate through Domestic Cookstoves

About 2 billion people across the world rely exclusively on solid biomass fuels to meet their domestic thermal energy needs. An estimated 2-3 billion or so people ‘stack’ traditional biomass fuels with ‘modern’ fuels like LPG or electricity. As long as an inefficient and smoky cookstove continues to be used in the house there will be adverse health impacts for the women and children and disastrous implications for climate change through GHG emissions and shrinking of green cover. The aggressive push for the so-called ‘modern’ fuels has not proved effective in the developing world so far. A science-based approach putting the user of the technology at the heart of the solution is a more effective way forward. The talk will describe the approach, present examples, and highlight the science and technology gaps where researchers may contribute. 

A joint ASET-Vigyan Vidushi 2022 (Physics) Colloquium.

About the Speaker:
Dr. Priyadarshini Karve completed Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Pune, in 1998. In a career spanning nearly 25 years, Dr. Karve invented a number of improved biomass burning cooking devices and “decentralised organic waste to fuel” technologies. She developed a methodology for technology selection and promotion to improve the adoption of clean cooking energy devices by end-users. In the past 5 years or so, her work has also focused on devising and promoting strategies for low carbon, sustainable urbanisation.  

She has published more than 30 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and has contributed to technical books. She is actively involved in national and international organisations working on decentralised renewable energy, sustainable development, climate resilience, etc. Her work has been honoured by several national and international awards and has been featured in a number of national and international periodicals, publications, radio and television programmes, and podcasts.