ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
August 20, 2018
Solar cookout aims to woo traditional chefs, cut carbon
SOLAR BUNS. Chefs (top photo) prepare to cook
buns in a solar cooker using a metal and glass vac-
uum tube heated by mirrors curved to capture the
sun’s heat (bottom photo), in Dezhou in eastern
Shandong province, China. A sprawling city of 5 mil-
lion in eastern China, Dezhou has spent millions since
2005 on transforming itself into an aspiring renewable
energy hub called the “Solar Valley.” (AP Photo/Fu
Ting)
Continued from page one
Smaller-scale vendors used three-foot-
long solar cookers designed to fold up for
picnics.
Temperatures can top 400º Celsius (750º
Fahrenheit) inside the black “BBQ tubes”
of metal and glass with turnip-tipped
bottoms and sealable tops. On a bright
day, they can boil water within 30 minutes
and roast a fish in half that time, according
to Himin.
“It is clean and smoke-free. better than
cooking with pots and other things,” said
Yu Liqiu, 22, a chef, who just began
cooking with solar two days earlier.
Dezhou, a sprawling city of 5 million in
eastern China, has spent millions since
2005 on transforming itself into an
aspiring renewable energy hub called the
“Solar Valley.”
Public art displays at town bus stops and
murals use solar panels. Stone statues of
sun-related Chinese legends squat in
parks.
China is the world’s biggest consumer
and producer of solar technologies. Many
homes outside the largest cities are
equipped with solar water heaters.
But roughly 600 million of China’s 1.4
billion people still cook with coal, wood, or
other biomass despite decades of
government-led initiatives to curtail soot
from such burning, according to a 2016
report by the Global Alliance for Clean
Cookstoves.
Affordable yet durable solar cookers
have long intrigued those seeking to cut
emissions, said Frank Haugwitz, director
of Asia Europe Clean Energy Solar
Advisory Company.
“There’s certainly a need for a cleaner
option,” he said.
Eastern China is a “global hotspot” for
black carbon emissions — sooty
particulates more damaging to health and
the environment than typical greenhouses
gasses — according to a 2007 report in the
academic journal Nature. Half of China’s
black carbon comes from residential
kitchens and heaters.
Sun Penglong, 27, worked in gas
kitchens in Dezhou for years before
switching to solar. He says new recipes
must be invented and tested for solar
cooking, but there is one unexpected perk:
His wife doesn’t complain about the
smell he used to bring home in his work-
clothes.
“The first thing my wife used to ask me
to do after returning home was to shower,”
Sun said after roasting some beef skewers
in a BBQ tube.
“When I started as a solar chef, my wife
asked me, ‘Where is your smell?’”
But getting solar cookers to the masses
has proven daunting.
Solar cooker technology has not yet
matured. While cheap types are available,
more reliable ones are still too expensive
for rural communities. “It’s kind of a
chicken and egg thing,” Haugwitz said.
Some experts fear solar is too big a break
from traditional Chinese cooking.
“It is good to have some innovation, but
it’s impossible to change people’s dietary
habits,” said Xu Qinhua, deputy director of
the National Academy of Development and
Strategy under Renmin University of
China.
“People used to say China’s fire-fried
dish culture would be replaced by
induction cookers, but no, it was not.”
Himin has yet to produce a retail version
of the cooker or sell it outside of Dezhou,
but the company claims chefs in the city
are already adapting cookers gifted to
them to a variety of regional Chinese
cuisines in new solar restaurants opening
up across the city.
In the solar-panel festooned Micro-E
Hotel, next to the field where the festival
was staged and down an air-conditioned
hall past portraits of Al Gore and other
climate advocates, Huang and other
festival goers toasted the vacuum-tube
solar cookers with glasses of fiery baiju,
red wine, and beer.
Next came a marathon banquet of
courses, including turtle soup and
pancakes served on platters with foot-tall
figurines of Chinese legends like the
mythical archer Houyi. According to
legend, he shot dead nine suns before
harnessing fire for humanity’s benefit.
Ren Yanbo, vice secretary general of the
Efficient Stove Division of the China
Association of Rural Energy Industry,
appeared to be won over.
“I was impressed by the taste of pig feet
cooked by solar, it was soft and yummy, I
could not believe it was cooked by solar,”
she said.
SWEDISH STORE. Indian customers stand outside IKEA’s first store in India, in Hyderabad, India. Swedish
home furnishings giant IKEA opened its first store in India five years after it received approval to invest in the
country’s single-brand retail sector. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)
Swedish IKEA opens first single-brand retail store in India
For more information, please call 1-800-860-8747 or visit www.ndep.nih.gov.
HYDERABAD, India (AP) — Band
music and loud cheers greeted hundreds of
customers as Swedish home furnishings
giant IKEA opened its first store in India,
five years after it received approval to
invest in the country’s single-brand retail
sector.
The store in the southern Indian city of
Hyderabad, India’s information tech-
nology hub, is spread over a sprawling five
hectares.
IKEA Group CEO Jesper Brodin said
the company’s involvement with India
began over three decades ago with the
sourcing of products.
“We have a long-term commitment to
India, which is an important market for
us,” the Press Trust of India news agency
quoted Brodin as saying.
The company’s vast array of goods
available at one place gives it an
advantage in India. The Indian furniture
market is mostly unorganized and
composed of small- and medium-sized
businesses.
IKEA plans to open 25 stores in India by
2025. It says it currently employs 950
people and plans to hire another 15,000 as
it expands operations.
India’s economy is growing by about
seven percent a year. Its retail sector
provides the second highest amount of
employment after agriculture.
But small traders fear that large retail
stores
operated
by
multinational
companies will lead to the closure of tens of
thousands of mom-and-pop shops across
the country.