CREEC HOSTS CLEAN COOKING WORKSHOP
Half of the world’s population relies on wood and charcoal as a cooking fuel. These stoves that use wood or charcoal are cheap, provide warm meals and heat homes throughout the world. However, these stoves come with a number of negative consequences that affect global health and the global environment. Each year, four million people are killed from the household air pollution that results from cooking with wood stoves. Additionally, roughly 800,000 metric tons of soot is generated from these stoves each year, releasing 18% of the world’s greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The trainees after the five day training on cookstove testing
The clean cooking workshop that started 22nd to 26nd July 2019 was organized by the Clean Cooking Alliance and the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Centre for Research in Energy and Energy Conservation (CREEC) under the theme “Building country capacity towards a clean cooking solution: The importance of setting standards.” The purpose for this workshop was to inform stakeholders from testing and knowledge centres about standards for testing clean cook stoves and clean cooking solutions, as well as on determination of tier performance, to provide hands on and practical training on conducting the cook stove tests, including equipment review, test result analysis, process for determining tiers of performance results, and how to report results. The workshop was also meant to encourage the development of national standards and testing mechanisms in line with the WHO Guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion.
Some of the participants were also engaged in a week long training theoretical and hands on intensive training cookstove testing that covered the following topics;
- Introduction to ISO Laboratory testing
- Quality Assurance, Theory and Practice
- Household energy and standards
- Laboratory testing and field testing
- Post test procedures and quality practices
- Standards adoption, Adaptation and implementation
- Durability and Safety testing
The participants of this training attended sessions that were facilitated by experts from the United States Environmental Agency, Aprovecho Research Centre as well as CREEC. Practical sessions were also facilitated by CREEC’s well equipped Regional Testing and Knowledge Centre that is recognized under the UNBS laboratory recognition scheme in accordance with ISO 17025. The participants from countries like Uganda, Tanzania, Botswana and Malawi also explored possibilities of setting up similar centres and even updgrading their already existing centres. CREEC sits on national and international standards committees and directly contributes to the overall national testing standards for Uganda with over 100 cookstove models tested by the centre.