Improving Brick Kiln Technology to Reduce Climate and Health Impacts (Revise & resubmit at Science)

Steady economic growth and large working-age populations are driving demand for bricks to support a decades long construction boom across South Asian countries. Coal-burning traditional brick kilns that operate in the informal sector produce the majority of these bricks and contribute substantially to global climate change and worsen local air quality. Also, work at brick kilns across South Asia is highly exploitative and often characterized by debt bondage, excessive work requirements, and hazardous or degrading work condition. In Bangladesh, past efforts to improve the brick kiln industry over the past 30 years have largely been ineffective. Regulations have been weakly enforced at best and are insufficient to address the scale of the problem. Attempts to promote modern, technologically advanced brick kilns have failed achieve widespread adoption, due to the high costs of these kilns.

We believe that engaging informal brick kiln owners to identify strategies that can improve combustion efficiency, reduce heat loss and reduce energy demand in their kilns and thereby reduce coal consumption and emissions. Crucially, these improvements also reduce spending on coal and increase brick quality, providing a strong economic rationale for kiln owners to adopt. Importantly, proper operation requires behavior change among workers. Our work demonstrates this approach can be successful: In a randomized controlled trial among 276 informal brick kilns, 65% adopted the improvements and adopters used 22% less energy, consumed 25% less fuel, emitted 20% fewer CO2 emissions, produced 19% more of the highest quality bricks, and spent 21% less on fuel per brick produced.

We are actively working to scale our successful efforts to reduce emissions from brick kilns across South Asia.