Alliance Congratulates Winners of Pilot Innovation Fund
This year marks the third round of the Pilot Innovation Fund (PIF), which provides funding and capacity building to organizations and entrepreneurs to develop and test game-changing ideas for the clean cooking sector, either through technology or business model innovation. In return for seed capital to develop and test innovative solutions, recipients are required to document lessons learned and share results to advance awareness of scalable solutions in the sector.
We received more than 50 qualified PIF applications this year, and after significant deliberation we are pleased to announce the following enterprises will receive a total of US$ 580,000 in grants to further develop and market test their innovations:
Colorado State University will develop an Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) add-on to high firepower woodfuel cookstoves. The EGR units will have a power harvesting chimney module that can channel surplus power via a USB port to charges small devices, such as phones. This technology will be developed in the USA and market tested with manufacturers globally.
Ecosur Afrique aims to revolutionize how char-briquettes are manufactured through the introduction of a modern biomass pyrolysis kiln – a 100-tons per month container-sized piece of equipment designed in Ukraine. The kiln is composed of dual drying/pyrolysis chambers that operate simultaneously: when the heat (biomass-based) is supplied to one chamber in pyrolysis mode, the residual heat is supplied to the other chamber (in drying mode). This technology will be developed in Cote d’ Ivoire before scaling to other geographies if successful.
Ecozoom will partner with PATH, a global nonprofit health organization, to transform their health workers into health and energy workers. Several distribution models involving health workers to supply cookstoves and fuel pellets to households will be piloted. In addition, the project will test schemes that provide non-monetary rewards for usage of pellet fuel. The aim of the pilot is to make pellet fuel more accessible and affordable and increase adoption of clean cooking solutions. This distribution method will be market tested in Kenya before scaling the model to other geographies if successful.
Novogaz will partner with POET LLC, one of the world's largest ethanol producers, to supply ethanol for cooking to low income households in Haiti. The project aims to supply ethanol stoves at the same price as traditional stoves and ethanol fuel at 15% below the price of charcoal. If successful, the partnership with POET LLC will allow smaller social enterprises around the globe to import and distribute clean burning ethanol fuel at lower volumes and price points. Project Gaia and Dometic are also partners in this project.
We thank our PIF donors: UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC).