Cleaner cookstoves in peri-urban Kenya

This research paper examines the challenges of clean cookstove adoption in peri-urban Kenya, highlighting how user values and socio-cultural influences affect sustained use. The study utilizes service design methods and quantitative monitoring to evaluate a pilot project introducing biomass pellet cookstoves, identifying three distinct user archetypes based on their motivations: saving money, convenience, and health and safety.

• Efforts to replace traditional solid biomass cooking methods with energy-efficient stoves often fail because new stoves are used briefly or do not fully replace traditional methods, leading some households to abandon new technology and revert to traditional stoves.
• Households that adopt clean cookstoves frequently maintain their existing stoves to address deficiencies in the new stove's characteristics and to meet a variety of cooking needs.
• A pilot project introducing biomass pellet cookstoves in peri-urban areas near Nairobi identified three user archetypes driven by different primary motivations: health and safety, convenience, and saving money. The study used service design and monitoring data to identify critical weaknesses in the intervention for each of these archetypes.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2020). Cleaner cookstoves in peri-urban Kenya. https://www.sei.org/publications/cleaner-cookstoves-peri-urban-kenya/

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Cleaner cookstoves in peri-urban Kenya. 2020. https://www.sei.org/publications/cleaner-cookstoves-peri-urban-kenya/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Cleaner cookstoves in peri-urban Kenya |date=14 September 2020 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/cleaner-cookstoves-peri-urban-kenya/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2020cleaner, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Cleaner cookstoves in peri-urban Kenya}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2020}, month = sep, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/cleaner-cookstoves-peri-urban-kenya/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }