Burn Manufacturing

Around 850 million people throughout Africa use wood or charcoal for cooking, damaging their health and the environment. At a summit in Paris in May, leaders from Togo, Tanzania and Sierra Leone backed a $2 billion pledge to increase clean cooking in their countries and across Africa. The execution, however, won’t be easy. Burn is making an ambitious bid to fight deforestation and reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses and health-damaging soot with one simple solution: making affordable electric cook stoves. To date the Kenya-based company has sold over 4.5 million stoves, improving the health of millions of households across Africa. Last year, Burn launched Africa’s first carbon credit futures based on emissions reductions related to the use of efficient cook stoves. The company, through its Ghana-based e-cooking project, sold 10,000 forward contracts that cost $25 each, along with 50,000 call options that buyers can act on at a fixed price for 7 years. Each carbon credit represents a ton of carbon dioxide or its equivalent, either removed from the atmosphere or prevented from entering it in the first place.