By Samuel Dodoo
Accra, Dec. 25, GNA – The Eco Radiant Engineering Solutions Limited (EcoRES), a youth-led for-profit organisation based in Ashanti Region has embarked on sensitization programme dubbed: “Stay safe, live long”, to create awareness on health benefit of the use of improved cookstoves.
To this end, the organisation has delivered 200 household-improved cookstoves to the Teacher Mante community in the Eastern Region.
The EcoRES aims at improving the livelihood of humanity through innovation, technology development and scaling, knowledge transfer, and education in the country.
Mr John Mark Addo, the Chief Executive Officer of EcoRES in an interview with the Ghana News Agency said since the inception of the company, it has manufactured over 10,000 institutional and household cook stoves.
“Through this, the organisation aims at combating carbon footprint as a contribution to the fight against climate change. Furthermore, despite combating climate change, EcoRES aims to make unharmful and appealing cookstoves across Africa with their improved cookstoves,” he stated.
Mr Addo 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 relies on traditional biomass for cooking, which results 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.
“This will help to optimize investment support, coordinate actions on demand and supply, and provide an enabling environment for the private sector to catalyze actions on delivery clean cooking needs,” he stated.
Mr Addo expressed optimistic that with efforts in place to expand their production capacity to 20,000 stoves per month, which would help the organisation take advantage of the voluntary carbon market and the anticipated favourable strategy is fully in operation.
He noted that the clean cooking sector has received very little local financial and capital market support over the years.
“Financial products and investments drive campaigns, the setup of B2Bs, venture capital, cookstoves and clean energy funds, and enhanced government budgetary allocation to enable sector initiatives to be activated when the clean cooking strategy is in place.
Mr Addo urged investors, particularly in the voluntary carbon market around the world, to come and explore partnership on the cookstove carbon project with his organization.
This, he noted, would be essential to helping in the fight against climate change and to protect the health of women and children from air pollution through the use of improved cookstoves.
GNA