Ethanol Scheme to Clean Air in Billions of Kitchens Goes Up in Smoke
An effort to build a scheme involving crop rotation, ethanol and clean cookstoves in Mozambique was defeated by bad roads, old trucks, slow carbon credits, civil unrest and tradition

11-11-2014 | David Biello

In Mozambique, as in much of the world, people cook with charcoal. The dirty fuel causes smoke and soot to billow into their homes. As a result, cardiovascular and lung diseases are rampant from breathing such smoky indoor air — a problem that kills at least two million people worldwide prematurely every year, primarily women and children. Burning charcoal to cook exacerbates pneumonia, emphysema, tuberculosis and even low intelligence, among other human health issues. To solve the problem in the capital city of Maputo, Danish enzyme-maker Novozymes and its partners, like many before them, wanted to introduce a cleaner cookstove.

The ambition did not stop there. Novozymes hoped to bring an entire bio-based economy to the southeast African nation, starting with improved crop rotations that would allow farmers to grow excess cassava. The cassava in turn would be fed to a donated ethanol-brewing facility, built in the town of Dondo. The ethanol would be the fuel in cookstoves, burning more cleanly and emitting far less harmful soot and gases.

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