Energy Commission to standardise cook stoves

The Energy Commission has disclosed it would introduce standards and labelling for cook stoves.

Currently, there are no ways of determining levels of emissions by cook stoves, most of which are produced locally.

Board Chair of the commission Dr Kwame Ampofo, speaking to Class Business, said the commission was engaging the Ghana Standards Authority to set efficiency and emission standards to help inform prospective buyers.

“We must have a cap for the emissions because improved cook stoves really mean that we will be using less fuel to do the same quantity of cooking and also they are not harmful to the user, especially the women who cook in the kitchen. Sometimes, there are emissions of gases like carbon monoxide, which is poisonous and very deadly because it doesn’t have any scent. So, when you are in the environment cooking, you could collapse if there are lots of these gases in the emissions that are coming out. So, it is necessary for us to test the cook fuels that people are proposing and churning onto the market and one way to do it is to have standards,” he stated.

“But how can the consumer or the potential buyer know what he or she is buying? Unless somebody that has been authorised to set the standards. So, we say that we will label them. The proposal that is coming is that we must have labelling standards to show that this particular cook stove, these are the specifications, these are the characteristics. When you buy it, you will expect more fumes from this, and then the decision is for you to decide which one to buy. It is the same way we are putting standards and labels on refrigerators.”