A crucial lever is improving access to clean energy for Three billion people. Getting renewable energy on small local distribution grids will help people phase out fossil and polluting fuels. The Climate and Clean Air Coalition(CCAC) has worked with development banks and micro-finance institutions to develop programs to support impoverished communities and enable them to get access to renewable energy.
One example is XacBank, in Mongolia. In this country, the smoke from coal and wood burning is a major contributor to black carbon and Particulate Matter (PM) 2.5 air pollution, and has made the capital, Ulaanbaatar, one of the most polluted cities in the world. The Coalition is thus providing technical assistance to the Mongolian bank XacBank to study affordable improved technologies, like electric and solar, for heating. In partnership with the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, the Coalition is also supporting a feasibility study that will advise XacBank on the design of a financial product to help poor families afford cleaner heating options.
There is a need to create conditions for efficient combustion. Very concrete levers exist: in places with poor access to alternative fuels or renewable energy, installing more efficient cookstoves partly answers indoor air pollution issues and can also help mitigate the climate change impacts. These cookstoves ensure that solid fuels are burned more efficiently, and that proper combustion takes place, reducing both the amount of pollution generated during cooking and the amount of fuel used.
Another important lever lies in the household lighting sector. According to the World Bank, about 101 million (out of 212 million) people in Nigeria do not have access to the electrical grid. In rural areas, only 34% of Nigerians have access to the grid. Most people rely on kerosene lamps, candles and torches for lighting. Yet, this type of lighting can be easily replaced by inexpensive solar lighting. In Nigeria, a group of rural women are working to protect themselves and their families from dangerous air pollution: the Rural Women for Energy Security (RUWES ), a sisterhood of over 2 million Nigerian women, is taking control of household energy decisions by creating clean energy enterprises, training women in the manufacturing and maintenance of clean cookstoves and solar systems, and creating a network of women to provide affordable clean energy solutions across the country. RUWES is creating a viable market and sustainable supply chain for clean energy technologies, provides a source of income for women by helping them become clean energy entrepreneurs, and supplies clean energy to homes and small businesses. It helps women access finance for business incubation and entrepreneurship. By 2020, RUWES hopes to provide 20 million clean cookstoves across Nigeria’s six-geopolitical zones.
However, those projects must be considered in a harsh economic context (impoverished households with very low revenues and almost no access to job markets, meaning that people might not be able to purchase new equipment despite being on the energy grid), while the cultural dimension can also be an obstacle (reluctance to change cooking or heating habits). Changing the way billions of people around the world cook their food, and heat and light their homes remains a very challenging task, and current levels of financial support going to the sector remains largely insufficient.
Finally, helping leaders realize the opportunity that the sector represents to reduce black carbon emissions and hence mitigate climate change can be an important lever that the Climate Clean Air Coalition(CCAC) is trying to help materialize.
Internationally, more than 120 million people commute by subway every day, and this number will keep increasing in the future as the United Nations predicts that 75% of the world’s population will be urban by 2050. On top of being crucial to the mobility of city dwellers, subway systems can also play a pivotal role in reducing outdoor air pollution in large metropolises by helping to reduce motor-vehicle use. However, in response to increasing scientific and public awareness regarding the importance of clean air to human health, several studies have revealed unacceptably high levels of inhalable particulate matter (PM) in some subway systems. This article reviews some of these studies and puts their results in perspective, given World Health Organisation(WHO) guidelines concerning safe concentrations of particulate matter in the air. Following on from this, the authors identify some of the key factors influencing subway air pollution and put forward a number of recommendations to help city planners improve air quality in subway systems, as well as commuters protect themselves from the brunt of air pollution in the subway environment.
Some countries have implemented effective and ambitious public policies: The Santiago Respira campaign in Chile is a good example of how to build public opinion support and to collect ideas for a “decontamination” plan. Another example of effective public policy can be found in Peru with the ambitious stove distribution program named Clean Cook stove Program Peru.
In Asia and Africa, progress towards improved and cleaner stoves has been slower. However, some initiatives must be underlined: Kenya has the leading market for improved cookstoves thanks to a bunch of innovative and successful companies. For instance, Koko networks is a venture-backed technology company operating in East Africa and India. It builds and deploys dense Networks of cloud connected “KOKOpoints” inside local corner stores, which serve as consumer access points for goods and services delivered in partnership with major suppliers. The network is distributing ethanol gel for cooking which delivers significant cost savings and quality of life improvements. In parallel, a number of companies like Envirofit do “pay-as-you-cook”methods meaning that the user and the distributor can track and monitor the consumption of the gas, to make it affordable or low-income earners and the middle class.
Governments can also support the energy transition by transferring subsidies away from polluting fuels like kerosene and coal to solar, biofuels, biogas, Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and other cleaner solutions.
In the last few years, many renewable technology initiatives to reduce the price of solar lighting systems have been developed and deployed, especially in rural energy poor areas. Working to improve solar and other renewables while also reducing the price of these systems is important to reduce household air pollution in many places. Other initiatives are emerging around carbon/climate finance mechanisms and innovative financing schemes developed with manufacturers, banks and other financial institutions, to finance clean household energy technology. The Climate Clean Air Coalition(CCAC) supported the creation of a black carbon monitoring methodolog by the Gold Standard Foundation, to give more efficient cookstoves access to carbon financing markets and make stoves more affordable. Stove manufacturers need the subsidies from carbon finance to lower the price of technology. Some firms are answering the air pollution issue through innovation: IKEA created in 2019 a curtain that absorbs air pollution. The curtain uses a unique technology, developed in partnership with universities in Europe and Asia, as well as IKEA suppliers and innovators. The way it works is similar to a photosynthesis process, activated by both outdoor and indoor light. However, this is clearly a high-end market solution, which does not address the problems of the most impoverished households.
Nexleaf Analytic is an important social enterprise using innovation to fight air pollution. This nonprofit technology company has a unique bottom-up approach for bringing data-driven solutions to public health and climate change interventions in low- and middle-income countries. The firm builds and uses cloud-based sensors, dashboards with visualizations and customizable analytics tools designed to help its partners monitor the uptake of improved cooking technologies and access climate finance credits. For instance, they built and installed StoveTrace in more than 700 households in India, a cloud-based remote monitoring system for improved cookstoves in rural households, which measures how often the stoves are used. The data allows stove manufacturers to track the way their products are used. It also enables payments to households via carbon markets and carbon funds to subsidize and encourage the use of cleaner stoves.
There is a growing market for products that protect people from both outdoor and indoor air pollution. However, mere protection is not enough. We need the private sector to innovate and to move us away from polluting technologies but also polluting commercial models and production chains as fast as possible. De-carbonising and moving to low-to-zero emissions forms of energy(whether for transport or energy production) throughout the life cycle of the associated technologies is the condition to ensure good public health.