I met Mouhsine while traveling in Southeast Asia. A Burning Man regular and enviably carefree spirit, I visited him later in India to discover his work as a designer and engineer to improve the lives of those with less. Two years and a Clinton Global Initiative award later, he gives us this exclusive interview, on his adventures in appropriate technology and the joys of designing for the other 99%.

In rural areas of developing countries, the issue of energy efficiency is not yet a matter of integrated systems built in to the structures people live in, which offten consist of little more than mud walls and a thatched roof. In fact, the most day-to-day activities to take place inside of dwellings account for 13 percent of global energy consumption and cause over a million deaths each year. That's because one-third of the world still burns biomass for cooking, heating and lighting, which releases toxic emissions and pollutes indoor air quality. But it's not the biomass--an inherently renewable energy source--that's the problem; it's the inefficiency of traditional, open-flame cooking stoves, only aggravated by a frequent lack of proper ventilation in houses.

Left: Traditional cooking stove in India, via World Resources Institute Right: Philips' Chulha Stove, via designboom

For years now, designers and engineers have been working on making safer cooking stoves that optimize performance by trapping heat inside a special chamber to require less fuel, and incorporating a chimney to vent the smoke. Landmark designs have included Aprovecho's rocket stove, Envirofit, the Lorena stove, or the Philips-designed Chulha stove, which won last year's prestigious Index Awards in Denmark.

Testing the "big mama" at Prakti's office and lab in Pondicherry, India. Fotos © Bruno Amaral

During my travels in Southeast Asia, I was lucky enough to befriend one of the coolest guys on earth (seriously), Mouhsine Serrar, who happened to be an engineer and social entrepeneur in appropriate technology, namely efficient cooking stoves. If he's not at some Burning Man festival, taking a salsa class or enjoying a visit from his daughter, you'll find him embracing life just as passionately in the rural outskirts of southern India, where his firm Prakti Design Labs tirelessly works to improve the lives of the poor through bettter stove design.

Prakti stoves in use at Sadhana Forest, Auroville. Foto © Bruno Amaral

Moroccan-born, long time resident of San Francisco, and based out of Auroville, Mouhsine and his team have developed stoves that excel the highest standards in fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emission in the world, with few resources and low budgets. In India, where 25% of the world's air pollution deaths occur, that's a big deal. He was honored at last year's Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, where he not only committed to developing fuel efficient cookstoves in Haiti (a country that needs new options for stopping deforestation) but also established partnerships with E+Co, AIDG and the Sierra Club, among others, to make it possible.

I decided to talk to him about how he got started, the impact of his design, where his firm is headed, and the rewards of designing for developing nations. Here's what he said:

A: How did you get into appropriate technology and particularly stoves?

MS: I was looking for meaning in life! Really... I always loved design/engineering and wanted to learn more about it. After school, I got the most excting job a designer or engineer can dream of, working for a company like Motorola, where you have access to everything you need (software, hardware, prototyping, simulaiton software, experimental analysis). Then I worked with Abaqus, consulting for the big guys like Boeing and BMW to solve difficult engineering problems that needed computer simulation. So much fun... I still smile when i think about some great analysis problem... But something was missing; I saw myself spending so much time and energy in my job, wondered why, and started losing excitement. Then second gulf war started and I felt that the work I was doingi was part of the problem. It was the best 'kick in the ass' i could have had. I decided to leave the company and dive into appropriate technology, an ideal situation: having fun doing design and engineering and doing for something that had meaning, had real impact. I stumbled into solar cooking first and dived into to it 100%. With time, I realised that solar is beautiful technology but improved biomass stoves have a much more practical impact. I got into biomass cooking ... learned a lot from Aprovecho, an NGO that specilized in biomass stoves, got practical experience, was hired once for two weeks of stove consulting in Mauritania, and that was the start of many stove consulting requests (for the last 4 years).

Prototypes of Prakti stoves. Fotos © Bruno Amaral

A: What are the advantages in using your kind of stoves?

MS: The stoves we develop save fuel and reduce smoke (indoor air pollution) by 50% to 80%. There are about 150,000 stoves based on my design in the world! That's far from enough... there's 600millon bad stoves on the planet--that's half of the world's population--that need to be improved. Three billion people use biomass for cooking. At an average of 1kg of wood per person per day, that's three billion kilograms of wood burned every day, and burned in very inneficient stoves! You can imagine the impact on deforstation and desertification, as well as global warming. Others issues with stoves are indoor air pollution (4th killer in developing countries after AIDS/malaria/water born diseases), and gender issues, because girls and women are the ones who spend the most time collecting fuel.

Household stoves start at €17 (single pot) to €25 for double pot with chimney. Institutional stoves are €210.
 

A: What places have you been able to successfully implement them?

MS: A mud stove design in Benin was very successful, about 80,000 stoves were built in two years.
In india there are about 70,000 factory stoves used. We are working very hard to scale up this number.

A: What has the Clinton award meant to you and your work?

MS: Like everybody, I love it when people tell me you are doing good work! Nothing major has happened to date, but I connected with another Clinton awardee that happen to be an excellent implementation partner for Haiti. Also, the award gives me credibility and opens many doors.

A: What are you working on now and where?

MS: A new stove that can burn either wood, or non-carbonized compressed biomass from agricultural waste .. it is so exciting!! I am also setting up a lab similar to the one in india in Morocco, specialised in efficient bread ovens and efficient traditional pottery kilns, and also in Haiti, specialised in charcoal cooking fuel alternatives. I'm starting slow until I collect seed funding. Actually, I just returned from Haiti now with many order for our stoves. Our latest institutional stoves that runs on briquettes made from urban waste (carboard, paper, cotton, saw dust) worked very well in Haiti schools. Each stove feeds 150 students (every two hours). We are sending a first batch of 100 such stoves and expect to make 1000-5000 within a year. After we burn all the trash in Haiti (running out of trash would a good problem to have), the stove will run on briquettes made from agricultural waste, sugar cane bagass, which are abundant .

A: What is the most difficult part of your job?

MS: Nothing really difficult. But to scale up--600 millions stoves!--it takes funding, and I do get annoyed when I see that funding agencies and social investors have no understanding or willingness to learn about  of the need of investment in product design/engineering to solve many bottom of the pyramid problems (stoves, water, sanitation, lighting, etc.). It will be so much more fun and have such a greater impact when funding agencies and social investor start hiring people with product experience!

A: What is the best part?

MS: Rockstar status wherever Prakti stoves are used! But really, meeting and working with really interesting people.

Just call him the Burning Man. Thanks Mouhsine!!!