As there’s a dash for implementation and execution of clean energy from the cooking to our industries worldwide aiming at reducing the atmosphere harm witnessed and global warming. Clean-Air (Africa), a five-year program focuses on addressing barriers to the adoption of clean modern fuels for resource-poor households.
In an initiative with Kenya Medical Research Institute aims to reduce respiratory and cardiovascular disease from exposure to household air pollution as it assists scale up the adoption of clean energy in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Clean-Air(Africa) is ‘clean fuel agnostic’ with a focus on the best available options for scaling clean cooking that can improve health whilst achieving environment, gender, and climate co-benefits,” Kariuki- Director General KEMRI said.
The initiative brings together academic, research, and clinical experts from Kenya, the UK, Cameroon, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda to provide research evidence for national policies supporting populations’ transition from polluting solid fuels such as wood, charcoal, biomass, and kerosene to clean fuels/ energy.
Adoption of Clean Energy is viable in the Sh1 billion initiative funded by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research under their Global Health Research Programme that has also had significant benefits for the environment, from reductions in deforestation and pollutants from burning solid fuels.
“Reliance on polluting fuels for cooking is detrimental to the environment through deforestation and land degradation, to gender equality through health impacts and time poverty for women associated with domestic roles,” Kemri director-general Sam Kariuki said.
Kariuki also emphasized the need to avert the reliance on polluting fuels as it leads to climate change through emissions of black carbon and methane that contribute to global warming.
Pointing out that unsustainable harvesting of wood contributes to environmental impacts including desertification, soil erosion, and flooding, and also to climate change with increased levels of greenhouse gasses.
“Gathering of wood for cooking and charcoal production has been estimated to be responsible for 40 percent of global wood harvest and almost half of all forest degradation in sub-Saharan Africa,” he said.
