The association has been named as one of the pioneering renewable energy projects from Africa, Asia and Latin America that will receive a prize of up to GBP20,000.
Tthe Association will compete to be the Ashden Awards' Energy Champion, with prize money of up to GBP40,000; the Champion will be revealed at a ceremony in London in June, the statement said.
The Gaia association is an organization working with the UNHCR in the Kebribeyah refugee camp near Ethiopia's border with Somalia.17,000 people live in the Kebribeyah refugee camp, having fled conflict in bordering Somalia.
"Fuelwood for cooking is a serious issue: gathering wood for cooking outside the camps is a lengthy business that puts women in physical danger; deforestation around the camp is so extensive that the government has banned cutting down trees; and cooking over open fires is unpleasant and causes numerous health hazards," the statement said.
In an effort to address these problems, by the end of May 2008, the association had supplied Swedish-designed, ethanol-fuelled stoves to all 1,780 refugee families in Kebribeyah refugee camp.
The UNHCR, Gaia Association and other NGOs including the International Rescue Committee and the Lutheran World Federation jointly fund the stove and ethanol programmes in the refugee camps.
The US Environmental Protection Agency and Shell Foundation also provide funding for the project, which is implemented in partnership with the Ethiopian Administration.
The stoves enable clean, comfortable cooking and can reduce the fuel wood needed by each family by nearly four tonnes a year.
The ethanol is produced from locally-available molasses, a by-product of the sugar industry, whose disposal previously caused water pollution, and local manufacture of the stoves is now underway.
The overall international winner (Energy Champion) will be announced on Thursday 19 June at an Awards ceremony in London.
The CleanCook stove, developed in Sweden for the leisure market and manufactured by Swedish company Dometic, uses an innovative non-pressurised canister in which ethanol is adsorbed onto mineral fibre and so does not spill. Stoves are now also being manufactured locally.
For more information:
Ted Örbrink
ted.orbrink@dometic.se