Michael Benedict, December, 2009
Toyola Energy Limited has been making efficient charcoal burning stoves, and selling theme in markets and door-to-door by Toyola “evangelists”, individuals who record each sale in a notebook and then are paid on commission. With 50,000 stoves projected to be sold this year and double that possible in 2010, the paper records are becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Over the past six months Michael has been working with Toyola and E+Co, a US-based non-profit investment company investing in Toyola, to develop an SMS-based recordkeeping system for their stove sales.
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From the article:
"Toyola evangelists are quick to point out that well designed stoves use 50% less charcoal than traditional models, meaning they pay for themselves in fuel savings after a few months. Increased efficiency also means that charcoal production and deforestation are avoided, reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with cooking by about 1 ton per stove per year. If carefully documented and then verified by a third party these emissions offsets can be sold to organizations in developed countries wishing to reduce their environmental impact. The process is called carbon finance, and is potentially a tremendous source of revenue for stove businesses. By a conservative calculation the value of a stove’s emissions reductions over three years is more than double its purchase price. This is capital that can be used to grow the business, reduce retail prices, and extend credit to customers, increasing the reach of clean cooking technology and making it more accessible to low income households.
"It’s not easy though. The most widely used standard for developing cookstove emissions offsets, a methodology published by the Voluntary Gold Standard, requires a rigorous registration and verification process. Vendors must maintain sales records which are later used by trained evaluators to follow up with stove owners about their fuel use and cooking habits (see http://www.cdmgoldstandard.org/ for details of what is required). Toyola staff and evangelists’ notebooks are currently the basis for these records, and compiling them is an ongoing challenge due to lack of infrastructure, literacy, and incentive
"Toyola evangelists are quick to point out that well designed stoves use 50% less charcoal than traditional models, meaning they pay for themselves in fuel savings after a few months. Increased efficiency also means that charcoal production and deforestation are avoided, reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with cooking by about 1 ton per stove per year. If carefully documented and then verified by a third party these emissions offsets can be sold to organizations in developed countries wishing to reduce their environmental impact. The process is called carbon finance, and is potentially a tremendous source of revenue for stove businesses. By a conservative calculation the value of a stove’s emissions reductions over three years is more than double its purchase price. This is capital that can be used to grow the business, reduce retail prices, and extend credit to customers, increasing the reach of clean cooking technology and making it more accessible to low income households.
"It’s not easy though. The most widely used standard for developing cookstove emissions offsets, a methodology published by the Voluntary Gold Standard, requires a rigorous registration and verification process. Vendors must maintain sales records which are later used by trained evaluators to follow up with stove owners about their fuel use and cooking habits (see http://www.cdmgoldstandard.org/ for details of what is required). Toyola staff and evangelists’ notebooks are currently the basis for these records, and compiling them is an ongoing challenge due to lack of infrastructure, literacy, and incentive
"Last week I traveled to Ghana with Erik Wurster, director of carbon finance for E+Co, to set up a pilot of SMS recordkeeping software intended to partially replace the notebooks. The application is called ASSIST and is based on RapidSMS, an open source messaging framework developed by UNICEF to support their operations in the developing world. With ASSIST evangelists can use fixed format SMS messages to update a sales database directly from the field. The application was designed primarily to track sales for carbon recordkeeping, but it also offers limited supply chain management and back office functionality. Managers access the database through a web interface that provides aggregate statistics and the option to export an auditor-ready excel spreadsheet of stoves sold."
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"I’m encouraged by Toyola’s reception of ASSIST, and curious to see whether it proves itself as a sustainable solution. I am also actively looking for future projects and interested in learning how to develop more sophisticated and flexible tools. I think that mobile tech presents exciting possibilities for development work, and look forward to finding other innovative applications."【正規品】最新のナイキ メンズ レディース スニーカー通販