No fuel, no flame: Sunstove secures its bioethanol supply

5 minutes ago

3 min read

A cookstove without fuel is a very tidy ornament. Africa has enough of those. So before Sunstove rolls out a single stove, we've secured what goes in it: Sunstove has signed a memorandum of understanding with Geomotion Energy for the supply of bioethanol cooking fuel to our cookstove projects in Zambia and Sierra Leone.

The problem, in numbers

~1 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa still cook without clean fuels – four in five households (IEA).
815,000 premature deaths a year in Africa from household air pollution, largely from cooking (IEA). Women and children breathe most of it.
Zambia: 9.2% of people had clean cooking access in 2023 – 16.8% in towns, 2.3% in rural areas (World Bank).
Sierra Leone: under 2%, against a national target of 25% by 2030 (World Bank-supported National Clean Cooking Strategy 2025–2035).

The prize is not small. The IEA estimates that universal clean cooking across sub-Saharan Africa would cut greenhouse gas emissions by around 540 million tonnes a year – roughly what the entire global aviation sector emits. Hold that thought.

Households don't switch. They stack.

Nobody throws out the charcoal sack the day a new stove arrives. Households stack fuels – charcoal, firewood, bioethanol, the occasional LPG cylinder – and use whichever is to hand, affordable and reliable that day.

That makes fuel supply the whole game. If bioethanol is on the shelf every week at a predictable price, it wins a growing share of the stack. Miss one delivery and the charcoal comes straight back. Stoves sold is a vanity metric; litres burned is what cuts smoke, saves trees and earns carbon revenue.

Hence Geomotion. A contracted supply partner lets us size each stove roll-out to fuel we know we can deliver – not the other way round.

Why bioethanol

Instant heat. No coaxing coals into life before the pot goes on.
Off means off. Turn it down and the flame is gone – no burning money on embers after dinner is cooked.
Clean and low-carbon. Made from crops, it burns without charcoal's smoke and soot, and doesn't cost a tree.

We're not claiming bioethanol is the whole answer. The IEA expects LPG to deliver most new clean cooking access in Africa to 2040, with electricity, ethanol and biogas doing their share. Bioethanol stoves are part of the solution – particularly in urban and semi-urban markets where charcoal dominates, an LPG cylinder is a big upfront cost, and the grid isn't reliable enough to cook on.

Carbon credits that airlines can use

Back to that 540 million tonnes. Airlines must offset emissions growth under CORSIA, the UN aviation scheme, using approved carbon credits. To qualify, credits need a Letter of Authorisation from the host government and a corresponding adjustment, so each tonne is counted once – by the airline, not also by the country.

Sunstove is now starting the application process for CORSIA compliance in our key markets of Zambia and Sierra Leone.

The demand is real. IATA forecast airlines would need 146–236 million eligible units in CORSIA's first phase (2024–2026). By late August 2026, approved programmes had labelled 41.9 million. Africa has shown the route works: in July 2026 Rwanda authorised 1.77 million cookstove credits for potential CORSIA use.

The logic is neat: aviation pays to take smoke out of kitchens in Lusaka and Freetown.

A word from Geomotion

Clean cooking only works if the fuel turns up. Our job is to make sure it does – every week, at a price households can plan around. Sunstove gives Geomotion's bioethanol a direct route into African kitchens, and that's a market worth building." – Geomotion Energy

The bottom line

Fuel first, then stoves, then carbon. Get the order right and clean cooking stops being a pilot and starts being a business – one that creates jobs in fuel production, distribution and retail, and puts cleaner air in the homes that need it most.

Sources: IEA, Universal Access to Clean Cooking in Africa (2025) and Clean Cooking in Africa progress reporting; World Bank WDI clean cooking access data (Zambia, 2023); Sierra Leone National Clean Cooking Strategy 2025–2035 (Ministry of Energy, World Bank-supported); ICAO CORSIA Eligible Emissions Units updates (2026); IATA CORSIA supply forecast.