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Figure 2. “APELI” (meaning in local language – cookstove that preserves the household and the environment) developed by DBFZ (left, Copyright Dr. Dennis Krüger), a woman cooking with APELI in pilot village in Dévémé/Togo (right, Copyright Wiebke Wedekind) 

The village Dévémé, located in the capital of Togo, was selected as a study field and in total 40 cookstoves including spare parts were distributed to 40 households. The cookstove, first introduced in July 2022, was improved within time based on user feedback. The final version is still in use in Dévémé and continues to receive positive responses for being efficient, clean, fuel-flexible, and practical—usable both outdoors and indoors during rainy days. Initially, wood pellets were used to enable a meaningful and comparable field testing. In a second round, locals tested various biomass residues, such as palm kernel shells and bamboo, to assess fuel flexibility. After the successful implementation of LabTogo project, the follow-up project HeRoTogo [3] has launched. Two main goals of the project are to establish a stable and optimized manufacturing process for APELI, and to support its local production and maintenance. Local production is expected to begin in Fall 2025, in close collaboration with our Togolese partners. 

To assess the environmental impact of the APELI cookstove, we conducted a comparative analysis by looking for an answer to the question of “how much wood and CO2 emissions could be saved in case of status-quo technologies; traditional and charcoal stoves are replaced with APELI?”. For this, we created two scenarios [4]. The first, called the “Baseline Scenario,” shows the current use of firewood in rural areas and charcoal stoves in cities. The second, the “Policy Scenario,” shows what would happen if these were replaced by the APELI stove using local biomass residues. This comparison helped us estimate how much wood and CO₂ could be saved. Our calculations showed that even a modest 5% replacement of traditional fuels with biomass residues like palm kernel shells could result in substantial environmental benefits. To visualize the scale (Fig. 3): the wood saved in such a scenario could fill a football field up to 14 meters high (for firewood replacement) or 24 meters (for charcoal replacement). The associated CO₂ savings would be equivalent to what 4 to 8 million trees absorb in a year (Fig. 3). Replacing charcoal stoves offers the greatest impact, but in all cases, adopting clean cookstoves like APELI helps reduce air pollution, combat deforestation, and improve public health and quality of life. Against this background, we are deeply committed to safe, affordable, and practical clean cooking solutions - because every new stove not only reduces air pollution, but also empowers women, protects forests, and supports local livelihoods. Clean cooking is more than just a matter of technology; it is a powerful driver of sustainable development and a crucial step toward achieving the SDGs and improving lives.