By Samuel Dodoo
Accra, Dec. 30, GNA – The Eco Radiant Engineering Solutions Ltd (EcoRES), a youth-led organisation in the Ashanti Region, has created awareness on the health benefits of using improved cookstoves.
In a sensitisation programme, dubbed: “Stay safe, live long”, Mr John Mark Addo, the Chief Executive Officer of EcoRES, said through the programme, the organisation aimed to combat carbon footprints as its contribution to the fight against climate change.
It had, therefore, distributed 200 household-improved cookstoves to the Teacher Mante Community in the Eastern Region.
The EcoRES aims at improving livelihoods through innovation, technology development and scaling, knowledge transfer, and education.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Addo said since the establishment of the company, it had manufactured over 10,000 institutional and household cookstoves.
He said the World Bank Report on Ghana, on the Impact of Air Pollution (HAP), March 2018, indicated that approximately 77 per cent of Ghana’s population still relied on traditional biomass for cooking, which resulted in severe negative health impacts.
“The total welfare losses due to HAP in Ghana reached US$3.4 billion in 2016. As a result, the government, in partnership with its development partners and the private sector, has made strides on the policy front by developing a clean cooking strategy,” he said.
“This will help to optimise investment support, coordinate actions on demand and supply, and provide an enabling environment for the private sector to catalyse actions on delivering clean cooking needs.”
Mr Addo expressed optimism that with the organisation’s efforts to expand its production capacity to 20,000 stoves per month, it would take advantage of the voluntary carbon market.
He noted that the clean cooking sector had received very little local financial and capital market support over the years.
He urged investors, particularly in the voluntary carbon markets across the world, to explore partnerships in Ghana on the cookstove carbon project, especially with his organisation.
That, he noted, would be essential to promoting the fight against climate change and protecting the health of women and children from air pollution using improved cookstoves.
GNA