Announcements
Research by PDRI’s affiliate Susanna Berkouwer was cited as evidence in the Giving Green
Recently, a rigorous RCT was conducted on the impact of BURN stoves. Berkouwer and Dean (2020, referred to as BD) conducted a trial of BURN stoves, and found that charcoal fuel usage (as measured by weighing of ashes as well as self-reports) declined by around 39%. This is close to BURN’s claims of a 50% reduction in fuel usage. Additionally, a smaller experiment involving 154 stove users confirmed that these reductions in fuel use persisted 18 months later. We would have liked to see long-term usage data from their larger RCT sample to verify the persistence of fuel use reduction, but we view these results as encouraging. BURN has confirmed that the offsets sold on their website are generated from the same stove model studied in this RCT.
Overall, we view the evidence on the causality of BURN stoves on GHG emissions to be quite strong.