Improving access to modern energy services in rural and urban areas of Tanzania remains a major development priority. A “Mini-grid” is an isolated, low-voltage distribution grid, providing electricity to a community – typically a village or small town. It is normally supplied by one source of electricity, e.g. biofuel generators, a solar PV installation, a micro-hydro station, wind turbine, biogas plant, gasifier, etc., or a combination of the above.
After decades of investments in improving biomass cooking, focused largely on increasing the efficiency of biomass use in domestic stoves, the technologies developed have had limited impact on development outcomes.
The multiple problems caused by biomass-based cooking, which affect 3 billion people in low income countries, result in 4 million premature deaths annually (which is more than the combined deaths by Malaria, HIV and TB, WHO 20181Fi), contribute to climate change and cause loss of economic opportunity.
Biomass currently provides ~85% of all household cooking energy in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Due to population growth alone, an additional 75,000 people on the continent rely on biomass each day.
Although BURN now offers a line of electric, hybrid and liquid fuel stoves, we believe it is imperative to provide super fuel-efficient solutions to households that only have access to biomass fuels. Watch the video to learn more about our approach.
