Addressing air pollution from firewood use in the residential and service sectors in Uruguay

Montevideo, Uruguay by Michelle Maria. CC BY 3.0

Workstream:

Solution Centre - Expert Assistance Service

Closed

started:

2016

The Coalition's Solution Centre funded a workshop to address air pollution from firewood use in the residential and service sectors in Uruguay based on good practice established in Chile. Responding to a request from the Ministry for Housing, Territorial Planning and Environment of Uruguay, the CCAC activated its network and identified an expert from the Ministry of Environment of Chile, who participated in the preparation of the workshop on "Good practices to improve air quality from firewood use in the residential and service sectors" and shared his country’s experience to Uruguay.

Objectives

The expert assistance provided to Uruguay aimed at providing input to Uruguay´s planning process to address black carbon and other pollutants from the household energy sector.

Uruguay’s Metropolitan Agenda Program (El Programa Agenda Metropolitana) and Ministry for Housing, Territorial Planning and Environment (Ministerio de Vivienda, Ordenamiento Territorial y Medio Ambiente, MVOTMA) held the CCAC-supported workshop with major public and private stakeholders from the country’s firewood sector, to analyze and promote good practices to reduce the sector’s impact on air quality.

The transfer of experience from the Chilean model helped Uruguay identify possible models for advancing the air quality agenda and formalizing the cross-sectoral work between the Health and Energy sectors.

Background

Firewood is the major fuel for household heating in large parts of Latin America and combustion of wood is a major source of air pollution in the region. Apart from the generated air pollution with associated health damage, firewood combustion is associated with low thermal efficiency, and a significant share of income dedicated to energy, which also determines a high level of energy poverty.

Chile has pioneered a series of air pollution de-contamination plans in cities around the country, addressing one of the main sources of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) – heating using firewood. The de-contamination plans of Chile have been implemented, with a lot of lessons learnt. Despite differences in realities of different locations and countries, the Chilean experience enables visualization of strategies, actions and alternatives that lead to tangible air quality improvements in the household energy sector. The plans in Chile include for instance programs to replace heaters with more efficient heating systems that use less fuel to generate the same energy, and are ultimately, less polluting.

Uruguay has recognized that the mitigation potential in the household energy sector is signiﬁcant and would bring additional health, social and economic benefits to the rural and urban communities. Uruguay’s air emissions inventory shows that the main contribution to particulate matter emissions comes from residential use of wood stoves for heating and boilers. This data is consistent with findings from the inventory of greenhouse gases developed by the Municipality of Montevideo, and air quality monitoring.