Amid reality that 80% of households in Nigeria still depend on biomass fuels, inefficient cooking methods that deplete forest resources and impact human health particularly rural women, experts have charged relevant stakeholders to massively invest in innovative green energy and safe cooking.

Clean cook-stoves are essentially designed to reduce harmful smoke and increase fuel efficiency compared to traditional mud stoves or open fires.

The advocacy for a shift to clean cooking is part of the recommendations towards limiting emissions and climate change impacts in developing countries like Nigeria.

Over 95,000-recorded deaths have been linked to smoke from firewood cooking in Nigeria, but clean cook stoves offer cleaner, safer and healthier alternatives.

The experts said clean cooking that include fuel efficient biomass cookstoves (wood and charcoal), LPG cooking appliances, ethanol stoves, complementary cookware and electric & induction cooking solutions are climate friendly cooking solutions

Nigeria can scale quickly, credibly, at household level and urged the government to prioritise support for investors in the manufacturing of clean stoves and position Nigeria towards attainment of 2030 universal clean cooking access target.

The stakeholders harped on collaborative partnership among stakeholders, enforcing standards to protect consumers and focus on enabling frameworks, policies to strengthen domestic manufacturing, limiting pressure on natural forest and ecosystems.

Speaking at a media roundtable entitled: “Unlocking Nigeria’s clean cooking future: Carbon markets, tax policy and local manufacturing” organised by Burn Manufacturing Nigeria, the Country Manager, Burn Manufacturing Nigeria, Etulan Ikpoki, said “Clean cooking is one of the few climate solutions Nigeria can scale quickly, credibly, and at household level.

He explained that when local manufacturing, strong standards, and carbon finance work together, the results are immediate and visible in lower emissions, healthier families, and real economic value for the country.

He welcomed the government’s leadership in putting policy frameworks in place that support credible carbon markets and clean energy investment.

To him, how Nigeria delivers on its climate ambition in practical ways with regards to how families cook, how women and children breathe, and how jobs are crucial.

“Nigeria has made clear commitments over the Paris agreement as well recently through the carbon market activation policy and ongoing reforms in taxation and industrial policy. What we are now seeing is a shift from ambition on paper to delivery on the ground. To date, we’ve manufactured and distributed over 5 million stoves across Africa. We have produced over 200,000 stoves per month and we have over 3,500 employees, 50 per cent of them are women.”

He disclosed that the firm has impacted over 27 million lives, saved over 29.6 million tons of wood, reduced carbon emission by 50.9 million and we’ve saved households by over a billion dollars through its eco-friendly products. We operate in over 12 countries.”

Ikpoki said the firm has a wood and charcoal assembling facility in Kano State to ensure delivering of its clean stove model to homes, adding that local cooking education for rural areas, especially the need to embrace clean stove is being intensified.

“So we are currently producing 100,000 stoves with the capacity to expand to 500,000 stoves by 2026. And we have a staff capacity of over 700. It’s about changing lives, ensuring that people go up the energy ladder. If you’re using a traditional charcoal stove, you move up to a clean charcoal stove and then you move up the ladder until you can have the purest form of cooking which is electric. For all our stoves, we are sure that they are SON certified. However, we still have the issues of counterfeit flooding the market,” he said.

The Chief Technical Officer at Standard Organisation of Nigeria, Benedict Souarede Preake, called for collaboration with SON towards introducing a laboratory that will control, test all the parameters that ensure everything works out well in terms of standard.

Indirect Tax Partner and West Africa Trade Advisory Leader at Deloitte, Chijoke Odo, said one of the expectations from the government centres around the issue of tax legislation especially encouraging and incentivising businesses like Burn the manufacture of products that limit climate change effects through tax credit and reduced tariffs.

Odo said certain incentives like duty waivers in terms of inputs, the manufacturing equipment needed for cook stoves, enjoys certain wavers.

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Climate Technology and Operations, Office of the President, Olamide Fagbuji, said the predictability of the carbon market is about the accountability of used projects, especially in Nigeria.

“We interact with quite a few developers and really share their pain of how the expectations for activating the carbon markets within the nearest future is actually becoming a challenge and being able to also do the business and enhance inflows into the ecosystem,” she said.

“And I think that’s something that we’re very keen to support because I think that’s where you get the most efficiency,” Fagbuji said.