Clean cooking solutions and development of a climate change mitigation programme by Climate Advocacy

Please find below the judging results for your proposal.

Finalist Evaluation

Judges'' ratings

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•	Feasibility:
•	Impact:
•	Presentation:

Judges'' comments

The revised proposal is much improved compared to initial submission. Barriers are clearly stated and how the initiative is expected to overcome them. The initiative seems sound and attacking a real problem. The new cookstove is much more convenient to use and efficient than the traditional ones: However it is also more expensive. The plan is to develop a large market for the new cookstoves without the help of subsidies to overcome the additional cost. According to the proposal, this is possible thanks to the revenue obtained from CERs. However, it is not clear how those CER will be sold.

In addition, more work need to be done on how it will succeed in an area where several well funded initiatives have failed. Hinting that the topic may be more linked to cultural issues rather that not the product of the supply chain itself, the initiative should give more room to these issues and explain clearly how the product and the distribution of ICS will be able to break the cultural issue and the local customs.

The author is strongly urged to work with local manufacturing and community channel partners, considering that many regions / communities already have the latest version of a 'clean cookstoves'.

Semi-Finalist Evaluation

Judges'' ratings

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Judges'' comments

Clean cookstoves is an issue that has been a major topic for a decade+ including substantial federal funding. You need to really articulate what makes your proposal about distribution of ICS unique and sustainable (without heavy subsidy). Because so many approaches have been tested and failed. As you note, it is not that there are no good options for ICS, it is a cultural issue and a supply chain issue.

In addition, the presentation of the proposal could be improved (some units missing in tables, spelling errors, grammatical errors). It would have been interesting to see a descritption of the barriers to clean cook stove market take-off and how the proposal was addresses the removal of those barriers.

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Dharma K.c

Nov 5, 2017
01:22

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Proposal
creator

Dear Judges,

Thank you for your comments on concerning issues of our proposal. I have tried my best to address those issues in various sections of the revised proposal. I would like to recapitulate our responses on those issues here too.

Although improved cookstoves has been in use in many countries for more than a decade, in Nepalese context, the technological advancement is still far behind, and we have found similar situation in other least developed countries including several developing nations. Of the distributed ICSs, more than 90% stoves are mud ICSs having low energy efficiency, and are not as attractive as the ICSs available in international market. Besides, the pace of penetration of ICSs is very slow so it not only requires technological innovation but also needs innovative approaches in overall project management which we have proposed in our revised proposal. We think it is fair to consider our proposal as an example of disruptive innovation in existing ICS market in a similar fashion like Tesla has been consider as a very innovative product in automobile industries although there were cars in the market since more than a century ago.
One of our major objectives is to make the distribution of ICSs self-sustained i.e. to manage the project without receiving heavy subsidy from the government. Our analysis shows that implementing the project with a proper business model can generate extra revenue in the long run and can attract project investors. Information on this regards is also provided in the revised proposal specially in “what actions do you propose?” & “what are the proposal’s projected costs?” sub-sections.
We have analyzed failed cases of ICS projects in Nepal and found that it is mainly because of not distributing an appropriate technology that end-users are looking for and the lack of efficient project management practices. The prototype that our Korean partner have designed meets several requirements of the end-users and we have proposed an efficient project management plan by ensuring the involvement of stakeholders via bottom to top approach. Besides application of information and technology, sufficient training and awareness, involvement of local authorities and marketing through media etc. are proposed which were lacking in ICS projects implemented earlier.
A brief description on barriers of ICS market take off and strategies to address those barriers are provided in the proposal.
Correction are made on typos and grammatical errors, and the table is revised for clarity.
Design of the prototype ICS has been added in the revised proposal. Almost all sections are revised to provide more relevant information of the program.