Cooking with charcoal on small stoves
called jiko is commonplace in sub-Saharan Africa.
For those on low or unpredictable incomes
charcoal is readily available
and easier to source than other fuels like gas.
50 Kenyan shillings
is roughly half a US dollar.
Cheap charcoal is a vital part of many lives.
Because that's the source of energy people use,
there's an entire industry that's been born
to cut down forests, make charcoal, and sell it to people.
As much as $47 billion worth of charcoal
is sold across Africa every year.
And while many ordinary people
benefit from this economy,
it's also having a more negative impact.
Charcoal production is the leading driver of deforestation
in Africa and is also blamed for shortening lives.
This indoor air pollution actually kills
as many as 4 million people,
according to the United Nations.
You also have to cut down the trees from active forests
to be able to burn the wood for energy uses
and that means that releases carbon dioxide.
And because you're deforesting,
there is carbon that's stored in the soil in the forest,
which is also released.
So it's bad for health, it's bad for the planet.
One Nairobi-based startup says it can disrupt
this huge market by replacing the charcoal
with a cleaner burning bioethanol
that would also save African forests.
We look at the potential for a solution
across 60 countries across Africa,
South and Central America, and Asia.
That is where we see a lot of use of firewood
and charcoal and a lot of deforestation.
Koko Networks sources its fuel
from sugar processing plants like this one in western Kenya.
Rather than chopping down trees to make firewood
or charcoal, the sugar molasses
that's converted into ethanol is a waste byproduct.
Koko distributes this cleaner burning fuel
to a network of so-called "Koko Points"
in densely populated areas in Kenya.
The machines, like ATMs for cooking fuel,
are placed in general convenience stores.
There, customers insert a smart canister
and, using a PIN code, fill up as much as they need.
Once the canister's been filled, it's plugged
into a special two hob cooker designed with safety in mind.
One of the leading causes of fires,
especially in informal settlements,
comes from charcoal fires and kerosene stoves.
So from cutting down air pollution,
bioethanol is quite clean because it burns
without producing all this particulate matter
that is usually breathed in by women mostly,
who are doing the cooking,
and then it goes all parts of the body, even to the brain.
So, there is no doubt that cutting down on air pollution
by using these alternative fuels is a good idea.
For customers switching to a cleaner fuel
like Koko's bioethanol can make a huge difference,
and not just to their health.
The system allows canisters to be filled
by as little as 30 Kenyan shillings, about 25 US cents,
so if money's tight day-to-day,
a customer can buy just enough for that one meal.
The ethanol is cheaper than charcoal
and competes on price with kerosene,
which the government subsidizes.
The system also appears to work well for shopkeepers
who host the Koko Point too.
Koko says one in four Nairobi households
are now cooking with their fuel.
According to data from the United Nations,
there's a reduction of over five tons
of greenhouse gas emissions per household
per year when changing from charcoal
to a bioethanol like Koko.
When you're talking about 585,000 households
and these are people who've converted from using charcoal,
we've provided them with a guaranteed fuel purchase.
So you're guaranteed that you will go to your
Koko Point, you will get fuel.
No matter how much money you have, we're within reach.
Of course, we have to be careful about bioethanol
and how it's sourced.
Right now it's being sourced
from the waste produced in sugar cane processing.
But if the demand for this product grows,
we need to be careful that we don't end up using cropland
for the solution, because there is not enough land
to be able to feed
all the billions of people around the world.
Koko wants to target countries
all over the world where populations rely on charcoal
or wood-burning fuel.
But to do so, they say they need financial support
to keep their products competitive,
as well as long-term guarantees
to maintain and attract investment.
We want fiscal incentives in the form of tax exemptions
on all our hardware and all our fuel.
And more importantly, we need carbon credits
to remain the property of Koko Networks.
That is important because we use the carbon credits
to subsidize both the cooker and the bioethanol,
and that is why we tell the government,
give us the leeway, give us the exemptions,
so that we are able to invest a lot faster,
get to a lot of these household sooner rather than later,
because we are seeing the impact of climate change,
we are seeing what we are experiencing right now.
So the sooner they give us the exemptions,
the sooner we are able to make the investment,
the sooner Kenyans can start experiencing the benefits.
Next year, they're hoping to start operations
in Rwanda, where the government's agreed to waive taxes
and import duties,
a model Koko says is essential to getting cleaner fuel
into more households to level the playing field
with charcoal, which is entirely untaxed.
Any kind of startup coming out with a new technology
has to compete with existing solutions in the market.
And as a new technology, it's not always going to be able
to be as cheap as what's available on the market.
So sometimes it helps if governments can step in.
In this case, many governments have stepped in
to cut taxes on fuel, and that goes a long way
in making the product competitive in the market.
But there's another challenge for startups,
which is that they need to be able to grow.
And so if there are ways in which that can be overcome
by providing more skilled staff and supportive financing,
then these kinds of technologies that cut emissions
but also address other problems that are energy access,
air pollution, can go a long way
in helping develop a growing region.