It is well documented that solar energy can be an effective means of cleaning contaminated water. This is because ultraviolet (UV) light destroys the formation of DNA linkages in microorganisms, thereby preventing them from reproducing and thus rendering them harmless.

Since about 1.5 billion people in the world use traditional stoves for cooking (and heating), efforts to improve the efficiency of cookstoves have been increasingly popular in the developing world. Improved stoves come in different forms and sizes. 

Alcohol burning stoves based on methanol can be used to supply a cooking service, water heating and heating of buildings. The technology can be applied in households, institutions (e.g. schools) and industries where it is used for boiler heating.

People have been using the solar cooker or oven for centuries. The first solar oven was made by a Swiss scientist in 1797. Solar cookers may be used to cook food and to heat the drinking water. The solar cooker concentrates and bends solar radiation with the help of a reflecting surface on the back, top, and bottom sides of a pot. Handling it is easy, but the solar cooker does need its space: the larger the reflector surface, the stronger its power to heat. 

Solar cooling technologies transform solar radiation to provide space cooling and refrigeration services. Air conditioning in buildings has traditionally been provided by air conditioners using electrically driven vapour compression chillers. These are responsible not only for GHG emissions, but also use CFCs and HCFCs and related compounds as refrigerant fluids, which also contribute to climate change and are known to deplete the ozone layer.

The iron and steel sector is the second-largest industrial user of energy, consuming 616 Mtoe in 2007 and is also the largest industrial source of CO2 emissions. The five most important producers – China, Japan, the United States, the European Union and Russia – account for over 70% of total world steel production. A standard technique that is applied worldwide is the coke wet quenching of coke, where quenching vapors are bunkered before delivery to the atmosphere and subsequently or immediately a condensate is drawn off and cooled further.