More Good News from C-Quest Capital (CQC)

C-Quest Capital recently announced a collaboration with Macquarie Group Ltd., a financial services company with A$550 billion in assets under management and 16,000 employees in 35 countries. The two firms will fund and deploy efficient cook stoves with pot skirts to one million rural households across Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania. CQC’s preferred rural stoves project standard is two stoves per household to decrease user fallback on three-stone fires.

USAID in-field testing in Africa showed that Rocket stoves with pot skirts reduced smoke emissions by 40% due to the use of less wood while cooking. Addressing health by increasing the air exchange rate in the kitchen and home is a fundamental component of this project. This is done by strategic placement of windows and doors, and promoting half-wall kitchens or well-protected external cooking spaces. A minimum of one visit per year by trained staff to each household to help repair, maintain, and ensure good use of the Rocket stoves is also essential to elevating adoption rates in the targeted areas.

Over the next decade, this investment will deliver over 40 million high quality carbon credits with verified Sustainable Development Contributions to the Voluntary Carbon Market. It is the first leg of a three-pronged program to transform the lives of low-income communities across Sub-Saharan Africa at scale. Ken Newcombe, CEO of CQC, comments, “Our hope is to include something like 100,000 Jet-Flames, assembled by Ener-G-Africa in Lilongwe, Malawi, in the project. Field tests have indicated that the Jet-Flame dramatically reduces PM2.5 emissions and exposure to cooks and their families, further protecting health. If the deployment doesn’t get to 100,000 sold by end of next year it’s not because of the demand – it’s because we couldn’t get the working capital and distribution channels to get the product to the market. Of course, we are exploring all possibilities.”