Stoves & ovens

Residential cooking stoves and ovens are used by households for cooking and baking food. A broad range of different technologies and designs are used for cooking in the world of today. While the most basic way of cooking—heating food above an open fire fuelled by biomass—is still predominant in many developing countries, in industrialised countries sophisticated stoves or cookers prevail, which use electricity or gas to deliver the required heat for the cooking process. Read more in the attached pdf file „What users can save with energy-efficient cooking stoves and ovens“. For about 2.5 billion people in the world, improved biomass cooking stoves are the cheapest way to save firewood, crop residues or dung, while reducing both harmful impacts on human beings and their environment. Energy savings of up to 80 % and significant reductions of GHG emissions, indoor pollution and deforestation can be achieved. Energy savings of 10 to 30 % can be cost-effective for both gas and electric stoves (also called hobs), and up to 50 % for ovens. In most countries, costs and primary energy can also be saved by switching from electricity to natural gas or biogas. The assumable most environmentally friendly way of cooking is based on the use of renewable energies as primary energy source for cooking, as is the case with sustainably produced biogas from organic waste matter (including manure and sewage) or solar cooking stoves for instance. Natural gas and petroleum gas (LPG) will in most situations be the next best alternative in terms of primary energy and greenhouse gas emissions, preferable over electricity unless the latter is predominantly produced from renewable energies in a country or region.

Potentials for improved energy efficiency of cooking stoves and ovens are large. Taken together, a reasonable estimate is that the potential exists to reduce total worldwide energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions for residential cooking by more than a third, despite growth in population. Analysis on the use of different cooking fuels suggests that about 88 per cent of all fuel consumed for cooking are biomasses such as wood, dung, crop residues or charcoal. This is due to the large number of biomass users, the low energy content of biomasses and inefficient stove designs. The daily fuelwood consumption alone accounts for about 7 million m³ in absolute terms. It is estimated that the new generation of advanced biomass cookstoves would reduce biomass fuel use and the related CO₂ emissions by about 50 percent. This can be several hundred kg of wood and other biomass that one family saves to collect or buy. According to calculations by the WHO, policy interventions aiming to make households switch to more sophisticated cooking fuels or improved stove designs are very cost-efficient. The comparison of costs and benefits arising from such interventions show that in monetary terms about US$ 100 billion per year could be saved by halving the number of people cooking with solid fuels through the provision of access to more sophisticated fuels and improved stove designs. Also in developed countries large potentials for increasing energy efficiency can be found. For example, an energy savings potential of 286 PJ/yr, or almost 50 %, exists in the European Union (EU) (period between 2010 and 2025).

Consumers and policymakers need to be able to compare the annual energy consumption and efficiency of different models of similar size and function. Test procedures to measure energy consumption and efficiency are therefore crucial for markets and policies to work well. Unfortunately, cooking is a difficult subject in that respect. We have collected and compared what is known on test procedures and standard definitions for energy efficiency so far.