SCORE aims to improve the life of over 60 Million people in developing countries. It started as a £2M research consortium, to significantly improve health, quality of life, economic growth and social and educational opportunities, and thus reduce poverty in Africa and Asia by understanding the energy needs of their rural communities and working with them to develop the capability to manufacture an affordable versatile domestic appliance. It has now widened to include other interested individuals and organisations in what we call the Score community.

The Score Stove combines the functionalities of a high-efficiency cooking stove, an electricity generator and may be fuelled by burning a range of biomass products. The Score Team is a research partnership that brings together four UK universities, Nottingham, City University London, Manchester, Queen Mary University of London and an international charitable organisation (Practical Action).

The Score Community includes, a leading US research centre (Los Alamos National Laboratory), a multi-national electrical goods manufacturer (GP Acoustics), interested individuals, and numerous universities in Africa and Asia. There is also a wider community to cater for the interests in the developed world.

The goal of the project is to collaborate to ensure that the Score Stoves are acceptable at a technological, economic and social level and that there is sufficient scope for the poor communities to develop numerous businesses from the manufacture, repair and innovative applications of SCORE and that the developed world contributes to the overall Score ethos.

The operation of the electricity generating and refrigerator parts of the proposed device is based on a novel application of Thermo-Acoustics. The concept of the device is based on the proven Thermo-Acoustic Stirling Engines and refrigerators developed by Los Alamos, NASA and the US military for applications including: cooling of satellite systems and radar arrays, gas liquefaction and cryogenics, use of waste heat for air conditioning, separation of binary gas mixtures and many others.
There is a significant level of innovation in the research work in three respects:
1)  research into the combination of the Thermo-Acoustic engine, linear alternator and cool box in a single device, powered by a biomass stove, which has not been attempted before,
2)  design of a rugged and inexpensive linear alternator that could be easily mass-produced,
3)  the overall system design from the viewpoint of low cost, application of indigenous materials, use of local manufacturing skills and simplicity of assembly, which are major research issues compared to the high-cost and high-tech Thermo-Acoustic systems produced so far. These challenges form the backbone of the proposed scientific and technological work programme.
Within the overall 5-year duration, there will be two stages to this project: the first 3 years started in 2007 focuses on conducting the necessary social and scientific research and the last 2 years on technology hand-over, including representative field trials and a wide dissemination among target communities after 2012.