Trust Counts: World Bank Bangladesh Clean Cooking Program

Around 80% of the households in Bangladesh use solid fuels for cooking. Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) affects 132 million people and contributes to 107,000 deaths each year. For women and children, it’s a grave health hazard. The World Bank in partnership with Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) launched an Improved Cook Stoves (ICS) program in Bangladesh. The improved cookstoves emit 90% less carbon monoxide and use half as much firewood as a traditional cookstove, thus effectively reducing the greenhouse gas emissions and indoor air pollution significantly. In its first phase, one and a half million cookstoves were installed in homes by 2018. Now in the second phase, the project aims to scale up the use of improved cookstoves to 3.5 million units. ​

A critical aspect of the Bangladesh ICS program is the active involvement of women entrepreneurs. This presentation discussed how gender can e better mainstreamed in the policy dialogue, and how energy finance can support the rapid expansion of a large scale. It also touches on how technology innovation can impact the adoption rates of large scale clean cookstove programs, as well as the guiding curve that results in behavior change for large scale adoption of ICS.​