Ahuyu

PROJECT #1:  Clean cookstoves for Santiago
Atitlán, Guatemala



Local Setting: Wood is the ubiquitous cooking fuel in the Maya
communities throughout rural Guatemala. In
Santiago Atitlán half of the households cook over an open fire, while
47% use an inefficient masonry stove with varying degrees of
ventilation. The average daily fuel cost for
families cooking over an open fire accounts for about 30% of cash
expenditures. Focus groups in Santiago reveal
that an improved cookstove is uniformly preferred for a variety of
reasons, including health, hygiene, comfort, tortilla quality, stove
durability, fuel efficiency, and time savings. The
singular barrier to obtaining an improved cookstove is the cost.
Solution: The fuel efficiency of an improved cookstove
confers savings that, in effect, allow the stove to pay for itself
overtime. The problem is that the cost of paying
for the stove upfront is prohibitive for families that make three to
four dollars daily. Microcredit provides a
mechanism to allow community members of Santiago Atitlán to obtain a
stove on loan and pay back the cost over time. Participants
join together every month for a meeting, where a promotora reviews stove
maintenance, collects payments, and hosts a forum for women to exchange
ideas and experiences.  Stove financing: To
breach the cost barrier, the cost of the stove ($95) is split roughly
even between microcredit and subsidy.  Interest
on the credit portion accrues at 10% per annum and serves to pay the promotoras distributing the loan.  The subsidy is necessary to make the clean cookstove
available to the poorer of the poor. Ideally the
subsidy will be diminished in the future to allow for greater
scalability. One option under consideration is to
externalize the cost of the subsidy through carbon credits.