I am all for solar cookers (I have designed and built several of them myself), but, I am not thilled about someone winning a $75,000 prize for an invention that has been around for several hundred years.  This solar box cooker looks like the one Napoleon's troops were using in the mid 1800's.  The only apparent difference is cardboard instead of wood and plexiglass instead of glass.  I wish I would have entered their competition! 

"The other finalists were Carbonscape, a joint New Zealand/UK venture to fix biomass carbon by turning wood into biochar—a kind of charcoal that can be used as soil conditioner, buried as a carbon sink, or burnt as a highly-efficient fuel"

Wheeew, this points out EXACTLY what is wrong with biochar. Many misinformed people will believe that burning the biochar "as a highly-efficient fuel" will actually result in GHG savings.

twitter: @amazingdrx blog

There are millions of poor people in the "developing" world that go out and cut down forests to burn for fuel... the forests are a carbon sink, which is destroyed in this process, and the burning creates more greenhouse gases.

We are, despite this, still driving our cars and expelling greenhouse gases AT THE SAME TIME.  BOTH things are happening SIMULTANEOUSLY.  AT THE SAME TIME.

There an entire organization that is dedicated to solar cookers and working to implement them in communities across the world:

Solar Cookers International

http://solarcookers.org/

I would have been more impressed if the grand prize winner won for his vastly successful marketing plan for this version of the solar cooker. It's great to be creative and improve the design of solar cookers to adapt to different communities so that people actually use them. With appropriate technology, the problem is always marketing. 

It says in the article that the inventor hopes to bring the solar cooker to developing countries (maybe starting in Kenya, where he's based) to "build acceptiblity" for the product. I wish him the best of luck, because in my experience working with appropriate technology in Cameroon, that is by far the greatest challenge, not the design necessarily. 

Since both emit CO2, it's obviously a mix, but how much of a mix?  The idea that the split in CO2 production of wood burning mud dwellers and car driving concrete dwellers would be 50/50 boggles the mind.

It's more likely to be an order of magnitude difference, by my guess...and also, by my guess, I'd pin the blame on the mud dwellers.   Move everyone into clean, green exurbian spawl with modern kitchens and CO2 bloat goes away.

Oh, and if I had to bet, I'd bet that it was mostly the first world's fault - we're the ones that have the machines to multiply productivity, and productivity = CO2.

How anyone could call this "innovative" is beyond me.

Great that $75k more is going to solar cookers, but it might have been better spent giving it to people who have actual experience tackling the challenges of gaining social acceptance of solar cookers in various environments. Solar Cooking International; SHE, Inc; etc ... There are people already making this work in the real world -- and even with systems that don't even cost $6.

Have to say that the article here is a joke. No reference to any of the organizations or other solar cooking organizations out there.

No links to options for solar cooking in the developed world.

No ...

What a waste of a prize ... what a waste of a post ...

The problem with innovation is never a shortage of ideas - the patents offices have thousands and thousands of great ideas registered over the years, that never made it to market.  Our competition was about finding innovations that were market ready and therefore promising as investment opportunities.  We did know that there are variations on the solar oven idea already out there, but the innovative element of the Kyoto box was the simplicity of approach, using existing manufacturing processes (initially a cardboard factory in Kenya, now developing a more durable plastic version in Indonesia) and simple resources to offer a full kit. As a result these boxes are cheap enough to retail in Africa and have a significant impact -  this could be cost neutral if carbon credits are factored in as part of an offset project. 

And don't forget this was a competition -  other organisations working in this area unfortunately did not apply to the Challenge.   If you want to win the race you have to show up!  The judges and  the voting public saw merit in this idea ahead of the others on the basis of the idea and its planned path to market.  Social acceptability is a big part of this challenge, and  we'll follow up later in the year to see how the Kyoto box got on...