Accra, Nov. 28, GNA – Local businesses involved in the production of clean cooking products have called for financial and technical support to produce affordable clean cooking products.
This, they believe would help reduce carbon emission associated traditional open fire stoves.
The manufacturers said the production of affordable clean cooking products locally would enhance accessibility in rural communities to support efforts towards achieving Goal 7 of the Sustainable Development Goals, which calls for affordable and clean cooking.
Mr Lovans Owusu-Takyi, the Chief Executive Officer, Sustainable Energy Technologies, made the appeal in an interview at a networking event to climax the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) Venture Accelerator (West Africa) Bootcamp at Aburi.
The Programme, spearheaded by the CCA, with support from APA Corporation and implemented by Innohub, is focused on widening the opportunities for small and growing clean cooking companies to participate in the carbon market and attract carbon finance.
The primary goal of the Accelerator is to widen opportunities for small and growing clean cooking enterprises to participate in the carbon market.
Eight companies from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Senegal, are benefitting from the Programme in West Africa.
Mr Owusu-Takyi said the challenges of competition with conventional products made it difficult for green businesses to access market to scale up their production.
He said prices of clean cooking stoves were higher and expensive for the rural end users who needed the product to cut their emissions and exposure to respiratory and lung diseases.
“The clean cooking market is developing. One key thing to do is to help the local factories who are in the clean cooking sector to be able to improve the technology to meet the regulatory standards, and develop their businesses to become investment ready,” he said.
Lindsay Umalla, Director of Country Transition, Clean Cooking Alliance, said affordability of clean cooking stoves should be a priority to enhance access and help achieve emission reduction targets.
“Cooking is a huge emitter of greenhouse gases so being able to tackle clean cooking as a climate solution is absolutely imperative and a huge priority when you are looking at the climate energy nexus,” she said.
Mr Nelson Amo, the Chief Executive Officer, Innohub, said Ghanaian entities struggled to access funding from the carbon finance and carbon credit market, a situation he described as unfortunate.
He said the Accelerator would support selected companies in the clean cooking sector to be able to harness opportunities in the carbon finance market.
“Businesses here have heard about the carbon market and carbon financing but they do not know what it takes to get into that space,” Mr Amo said.
According to the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, exposure to smoke from cooking on open fires or with inefficient fuels causedbnearly 4 million premature deaths per year.
It is estimated that about three-quarters of households in Ghana used traditional open fire stoves for cooking, which produced significant greenhouse gas emissions and exposed families to high concentrations of toxic smoke.
GNA