A Salvadoran wanted to help the environment and his country's poor. Instead, his acclaimed invention has cost him his family and savings.

SAN SALVADOR -- In a makeshift laboratory equipped with little more than a battered chair and a cheap kitchen scale, inventor Rene Nunez Suarez displays the contraption that has become his life's obsession.

It's a stainless-steel cooker that uses about 95% less fuel than conventional wood stoves, with minimal pollution. It would seem to be a can't-miss technology in a country where millions still cook with wood and most forests have been destroyed.


The device has garnered Nunez a prestigious environmental prize. It has earned him a U.S. patent. And it has won fans among some Salvadoran peasants who no longer spend a good chunk of their days hunting for firewood and the rest inhaling cooking smoke.

It has also wrecked Nunez's marriage, alienated two of his three children and swallowed his life savings. At 61, he lives with his mother to save on rent and drives a 1990 Kia. Nunez knows some people think he's a fool to have poured $2.5 million of his and his family's money into his project with little to show for it.

"My ex-wife said: 'Man, you are an idiot. Poor people have no money. They are not going to buy your stoves,' " he said. "She was right."