Think of it as the Higgs Boson of energy poverty alleviation.

Seriously, though, this blog post comes to us from Harvest Fuel Initiative-partner, ARTI-Tanzania (a type of Large Hadron Collider on itself) and tells the whole story of how we’re coming together to help address one of the root causes of various social and environmental problems in the developing world: the dependence on wood and charcoal for cooking and heating.

 

Harvest Fuel Initiative

 

ARTI-TZ has been selected to participate in the Harvest Fuel Initiative (HFI), a joint project of D-Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass. and The Charcoal Project, headquartered in New York.

HFI enables the deployment of sustainable solid biomass fuels through the dissemination of appropriate technologies and knowledge to small and medium-sized enterprises. D-Lab Scale-Ups provides funding, technology and business support to selected participants. TCP serves as project manager and is responsible for building the infrastructure to sustain the HFI’s mission and activities. ARTI-TZ is one of four social enterprises in East Africa selected for HFI.

HFI will support ARTI’s existing ‘Scaling-Up of Charcoal Briquette Production in Tanzania’ (see ‘Projects’ tab on ARTI’s website) and aims to “enable a fuel switch from unsustainable charcoal to sustainable non-wood charcoal in Tanzania”. The initiative will work with ARTI to introduce end-of-value-chain features that will promote the expansion of the sustainable charcoal market. The initial areas of focus will be upon brand development, distribution channels, consumer sensitization and policy interventions that will assist the exposure and sales performance of ARTI’s non-wood charcoal product. The second year will focus on monitoring the progress of the charcoal briquette enterprise to identify trends, opportunities and challenges.

Read the rest of the story on the ARTI website.