CRESTED BUTTE — It worked for sleds. It worked for rum. Now Brice Hoskin is hoping his entrepreneurial flair works for cook stoves.
But he’s not in it for the money. Hoskin is hoping his latest invention — a hyper-efficient, collapsible steel stove that burns just about anything and could be made for as little as a $1 — will help millions of the world’s poorest people.
“I’m trying to prove a point. This doesn’t have to be a $30 stove. You can create something that works well for much, much less. It’s a pragmatic approach that makes sense,” said Hoskin, who, with wife Karen, runs Montanya Rum distillery in Crested Butte and recently sold their successful Mountain Boy Sledworks operation.
Hoskin grew up exploring the backcountry. He has tinkered with cook stoves all his life. His Ganesh Cookstove is the culmination of that lifetime of fiddling. It’s constructed from five different pieces of metal, so it can be easily fabricated in rural areas. The whole thing — which weighs less than a pound and is about the size of a shoe box — collapses flat as a dinner plate.
Using a low-tech micro-gasifier design that burns any dry biomass — wood, hay, manure — and captures the emitted gas for a cooking flame, the stove is efficient and reduces emissions.
The idea — like the hundreds of similar cook stoves developed for developing nations — is to reduce indoor air pollution for the estimated 3 billion people who cook and heat their homes with open fires, coal and open stoves.
The World Health Organization estimates more than 4 million people a year die prematurely from illnesses caused by smoke coming from those indoor fires. The organization links more than half of premature deaths among children under 5 to respiratory ailments caused by soot from those fires.
Hoskin’s design isn’t revolutionary. The purpose of the stove is mirrored by hundreds of similar, low-emission stoves that groups have distributed by the tens of thousands in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, south and east Asia, and Latin America. Colorado State University’s Engines and Energy Conversion Laboratory is one of the world’s largest proponents of clean-burning cook stoves, winning a $1.2 million federal grant in 2012 to distribute efficient semi-gasifier stoves in China and India.
Price is where Hoskin aims to differentiate his stove.
Made from stainless steel, Hoskin estimates manufacturing facilities in developing countries can make 1,000 of his stoves for about $5 each and sell them for about $10. Use regular steel, and the cost and selling price drop even more, he said.
Many of the existing efficient, low-emission stoves retail for at least $40. In the world’s poorest countries, where residents earn less than $2 a day, that is a formidable cost.
The Hoskins and their two teenage sons head to Nepal this month, where they plan to visit a village of about 30 households in the Langtang region of the Himalayas, north of the Katmandu Valley. They are bringing about 30 stoves, one for every family displaced by a devastating earthquake in April.
Those villagers will be the real-world testers of his stove.
Hoskins plans to formally test his stove’s efficiency in Katmandu and will look for a metal cutting and production facility that could fabricate the simple design.
Hoskin worked with the metal artisans at Montrose’s Recla Metals to engineer a design for the Ganesh Cookstove that could be easily replicated.
The Community Foundation of the Gunnison Valley typically works with projects that help residents of the region but is helping Hoskin as he works to establish a nonprofit to promote the stoves.
“I really believe in philanthropic hearts, and Brice certainly has one,” said foundation executive director Pam Montgomery. “He’s not going to make a penny off this project, but it could change a lot of lives.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374, jblevins@denverpost.com or @jasonblevins
