Thanks for sharing this idea! I want to encourage you that it may be much more cost-effective if you do include health benefits.
I appreciate that you left health benefits out of your analysis because of this GiveWell meta-analysis which found that distribution of clean-burning stoves did not have major health benefits. However, my reading of this study is that many of the distribution programs suffered from low usage of the new, non-traditional stoves; hence the indoor air pollution did not decrease much. In your intervention, if people did start soaking beans that seems virtually certain to reduce the amount of time required to cook → reduce indoor air pollution → improve health.
I live and work in North India, where there are also still substantial issues with indoor air pollution. I’ve started a small program to help subsidize people switching from biomass stoves to gas stoves. Using fairly similar assumptions and methods to yours, my rough cost-effectiveness analysis found that subsidizing one family’s gas connection saved (over a 3 year period) 0.3 DALYs, which is probably more important than the $100 or the 3 tonnes of CO2e which it also saved.
Thanks for sharing this idea! I want to encourage you that it may be much more cost-effective if you do include health benefits.
I appreciate that you left health benefits out of your analysis because of this GiveWell meta-analysis which found that distribution of clean-burning stoves did not have major health benefits. However, my reading of this study is that many of the distribution programs suffered from low usage of the new, non-traditional stoves; hence the indoor air pollution did not decrease much. In your intervention, if people did start soaking beans that seems virtually certain to reduce the amount of time required to cook → reduce indoor air pollution → improve health.
I live and work in North India, where there are also still substantial issues with indoor air pollution. I’ve started a small program to help subsidize people switching from biomass stoves to gas stoves. Using fairly similar assumptions and methods to yours, my rough cost-effectiveness analysis found that subsidizing one family’s gas connection saved (over a 3 year period) 0.3 DALYs, which is probably more important than the $100 or the 3 tonnes of CO2e which it also saved.
So I think this is a promising idea!
Thanks so much Tom. I’m probably going to just copy your analysis and adjust it to look at that potential here. Appreciate the encouragement!