Solar-powered cardboard cooker wins prize for climate change innovation

The Kyoto Box, which targets the three billion people who use firewood to cook, is the product of Kenya’s Kyoto Energy Ltd. It consists of two cardboard boxes, one inside the other, with an acrylic cover that lets the sun’s power in, but stops it escaping. This fuel-less cooker is estimated to prevent two tonnes of carbon emissions per family per year.

The box beat off five other shortlisted products to win the £52,000 prize money in the FT Climate Change Challenge. The other finalists included a feed additive to reduce cow flatulence, a cover for lorry wheels, ‘evaporating tiles’ and a giant industrial microwave that 'fixes' the carbon sucked out of the atmosphere by trees by turning wood into charcoal. The food additive made from garlic, called Mootral, and the Loughborough ceiling tiles were runners up.

The Kyoto box, which costs €5 to make, also has a social benefit, saving millions of children who die each year from drinking unclean water by allowing families to boil water and sparing women from the sometimes dangerous job of gathering fuel and the risks of smoke inhalation.

"We're saving lives and saving trees," said Kyoto Energy's Jon Bøhmer. "I doubt if there is any other technology that can make so much impact for so little money."

The design is so simple that the Kyoto Box can be produced in existing cardboard factories – it has just gone into production in a Nairobi factory that can produce 2.5 million boxes a month – and it can be flatpacked and distributed by lorry in its thousands.

Bøhmer, a Norwegian, set up Kyoto Energy with his Kenyan wife Neema, and has used his own money to fund the project. He plans to use the prize to conduct mass trials in 10 countries, including South Africa, India and Indonesia and gather data to back an application for carbon credits, which will allow the project to be scaled up.

He has developed a more robust, longer-lasting cooker in corrugated plastic, which he says can be mass-produced as cheaply as the cardboard version. They can be manufactured in existing factories and he plans to produce 10,000 for the trials.

The FT Climate Change Challenge, which was established to find innovative products that can be developed and scaled up rapidly to make the greatest contribution to tackling climate change, is backed by the Financial Times, HP and Forum for the Future.

Peter Madden, chief executive of the Forum for the Future, said: "The competition has been a resounding success. Our finalists show the vital role of green innovation in tackling climate change, and we hope publicity from the competition will help speed their route to market. The Kyoto Box has the potential to transform millions of lives and is a model of scalable, sustainable innovation."