By Wanja Mwaniki
While studying Microbiology at Kenyatta University, Justine Abuga discovered a passion for charity work. Together with his friends, he formed a group dedicated to helping the less fortunate. One day, while visiting the Watu Wa Maana Children’s Home to donate food, the youngsters were asked to collect firewood to cook the food they had brought.
“It was April, during the long rains, and these children were required to go out and fetch firewood to cook the food we donated,” Justine recalls.
“I was left wondering how one could collect firewood in a slum in Nairobi and how we even expected these children to cook the food.”
This experience brought back memories of his own childhood, watching his mother struggle to cook with firewood and suffer from the smoke’s effects.
Motivated by this experience, Justine returned to college and began researching clean cooking fuels to help ease the burden on the children’s home. When he couldn’t find any affordable and clean cooking energy, he decided to take matters into his own hands. In 2016, he founded Ecobora, a green energy company.
“Our first project was making and distributing briquettes and wood pellets as alternative sources of energy to children’s homes,” says Abuga. “We later expanded to other rural households.”
Ecobora www.ecobora.co is a green energy company whose vision is to empower local communities using green energy as a catalyst for energy poverty alleviation. “We started seeing the impact we had on families and communities where our wood pellets began replacing collecting and using smoky firewood in rural homes,” says Abuga.
“After some time we also learned that although these children were not required to collect firewood to be used to cook in their homes, their schools required them to collect and bring firewood to school so that they would be able to access a free meal,” he adds.
A new challenge also led to a scarcity of firewood, which called for an immediate intervention. “In 2018, the government banned logging without providing schools with an alternative fuel source. This was devastating, as school feeding costs tripled and more students went on learning with empty stomachs,” says Abuga.
This situation prompted Abuga and his team to develop a solar-powered cook stove primarily to assist rural marginalized schools.
“This was the first-ever 100 percent solar-powered cook stove that allows around-the-clock cooking by tapping the sun’s energy and storing it in lithium-ion batteries, eliminating the use of firewood,” he explains.
The stove provides heat energy even during rainy seasons and works with existing boiler fabricators and Jua kali artisans to distribute the stoves. According to Abuga, this innovation saves schools almost 100 percent of their fuel costs, allowing funds to be reallocated to other projects, such as equipping laboratories to enhance the quality of education for students.
To date, the company has been serving more than 35,000 students and schools with the solar boiler project. Unlike firewood cook stoves used in institutions and schools, where a school of 400 to 1,000 students might consume over 96 tons of firewood per year, this 100 percent solar-powered innovation saves schools more than Sh 1.5 million annually. One unit of the solar cooking stove comprises three cooking stoves, five lithium-ion batteries, and 14 solar panels, costing Sh 3,000,000. Schools are offered a three-year repayment option.
“We are not a financial burden to schools; rather, they can direct their annual firewood budgets to Ecobora, and by the third year, they begin making savings,” he adds. “Unlike existing firewood stoves, our technology uses special solar panels with an 83 percent energy conversion efficiency compared to solar heating systems of 23 percent efficiency. This enables it to generate enough thermal energy for heavy commercial users such as schools, hospitals, TVETs, universities, and factories, which are the biggest consumers of firewood.
The stoves eliminate the use of firewood entirely since they have lithium-ion batteries that store heat energy until needed, unlike conventional stoves that rely fully on firewood. The stove is fitted with sensors that, through the Internet of Things (IoT), relay information to the cooks and operators on any leakages, the amount of energy converted, energy used, energy deficit, cooking time, and emission reductions, generating crucial energy data sets.
“Our plan for the near future is to introduce carbon financing. All our smart solar stoves will be registered, and we will begin generating carbon credits that can be used to offer carbon financing to rural under-funded schools in Kenya,” says Abuga. “This will be a game-changer since the biggest factor holding potential clients back is the acquisition cost of our solar stove.”
