Methods for generating market intelligence for improved cookstove dissemination: a case study in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala

Today there are 2.4 billion people exclusively dependent on the combustion of low quality biomass fuels in open fires and inefficient traditional stoves for household cooking. When compared to higher quality fuels and modern technologies, these methods come with many negative and avoidable consequences in the areas of public health, global climate change, environmental degradation, and poverty. Improved Cookstoves (ICS) can be a part of the solution to many of these widespread problems. ICSs, when properly designed and utilized, can improve public health, reduce global warming and deforestation, and help the world's poorest families climb out of the poverty trap. ICS dissemination efforts have been underway since the 1970s with limited success, and today there is a growing interest and focus on tapping into the power of the market to distribute ICSs throughout the world. While the market presents a prodigious opportunity for increasing the penetration of ICS worldwide, there are a number of barriers that have inhibited this pathway from becoming a viable alternative to donation-based dissemination models. In this thesis I identify and discuss many of these barriers and focus on information gaps that are inhibiting key players in ICS manufacturing and marketing sectors from more effectively designing, manufacturing and marketing stoves. Through the lens of the Doña Dora ICS case study in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, I demonstrate a set of tools and methods to estimate economic viability using tradition financial metrics including net present value, internal rate of return, time to payback and benefit to cost ratio. One of the outcomes of this work is the Cookstove Calculator, a dynamic spreadsheet tool. With this tool, and a short household survey, cookstove manufacturers and marketing programs can quickly analyze the feasibility of an investment in any stove for any family. The Cookstove Calculator can also be combined with data from a random household survey to estimate total market demand. In this thesis I demonstrate this tool and these methods to estimate that the Doña Dora ICS is a net positive investment for roughly 40,000 households in rural Quetzaltenango. I also show how these tools and methods can be used to identify critical thresholds in stove parameters, such as fuel savings, sales price, and product lifetime that determine investment viability.