«A solar-powered cardboard cooker will on Thursday be announced the winner of a $75,000 competition to tackle climate change.The Kyoto Box uses the sun’s rays to cook food and boil water. It is targeted at the 3bn people who currently use firewood. The box costs just $5 (£3.40) to make and will be given away free.
Jon Bøhmer, the cooker’s inventor, said: “It’s a great feeling. The prize is just what’s needed to get this project off the ground. There’s only so much I can do on my own.” The FT Climate Change Challenge sought to find and publicise the most innovative and scalable solution to the effects of climate change.
Sponsored by Hewlett Packard, the technology company, the competition was organised by Forum for the Future, a sustainable development charity, and the Financial Times. Sir Richard Branson and Dr Rajendra Pachauri, a Nobel prize winner, were among the judges, who chose the winner in conjunction with a public vote.
That public support helped the Kyoto Box beat nearly 300 entries to win the competition. The cooker consists of two cardboard boxes, one inside the other, with a clear acrylic cover on top that lets in and traps heat from the sun, and acts as a hob. Black paint, foil and insulation work together to raise the temperature high enough to boil water. The box is appealing because of its sheer simplicity. “There are too few people looking at simple research,” said Mr Bøhmer. “We need the basic stuff too.” The box is so easy to make that it can be produced in existing cardboard factories. A more robust version has been developed in corrugated plastic, which costs the same and is ready for testing across 10 countries.
By replacing firewood, the cooker could save up to two tonnes of carbon emissions per family per year. Mr Bøhmer hopes the box will be eligible for carbon credits, hence the name Kyoto box, making a yearly profit of €20-€30 (£18-£27) per stove, which would enable further expansion and easily cover the cost of replacing the cooker after five years.
The stove also aims to save lives: it can boil 10 litres of water in two hours, destroying the germs that kill millions of children each year.» in Financial Times, 8-4-2009
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