Abstract
2.8 billion people around the globe continue to use open fires and biomass stoves for cooking and heating. Household air pollution is a serious health hazard, especially for women and children. A solution involves promoting so-called clean fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The purpose of this research is to examine the use of LPG cookstoves in the Cuzco Region of Peru. A specific focus is on the Peruvian government’s FISE gas subsidy program. Surveys were administered to seventy-seven households in four indigenous agriculturalist communities over two different years. The results show the widespread use of gas stoves, but only as a supplement to wood and other biomass. We concluded that FISE is well organized, easy to use, and properly targets low income households. However, while the LPG subsidy program does promote the use of some gas, it is insufficient to prompt a complete fuel switch given current prices and resource availability. This research critiques the energy ladder model for fuel switching, and the results reveal that the use of multiple fuels, or fuel stacking, continues to be the norm. Furthermore, the data suggest an increase in eucalyptus and pine reforestation efforts, which will impact the relative scarcity of fuels, fuel choice, and health in the rural areas of the Cuzco Region.
Highlights
2.8 billion people, primarily in rural areas in developing countries, still rely on biomass fuels for cooking and heating [1]
The purpose of this research is to examine the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cookstoves in rural areas of the Cuzco Region of Peru
What is the rate of adoption of LPG for cooking? How and under what conditions is LPG used? And, is the subsidy program effective in promoting a switch to LPG? Surveys were administered to seventy-seven households in four indigenous agriculturalist communities
Summary
2.8 billion people, primarily in rural areas in developing countries, still rely on biomass fuels for cooking and heating [1]. The use of open cookfires in poorly vented dwellings, and the damage to health by the resulting household air pollution, has been well documented [2,3,4]. These problems are widespread and complex, and a multitude of technologies have been proposed as solutions. They generally involve either making the “available clean” (promoting improved biomass cookstoves) or making the “clean available” (switching to cleaner burning fuels) [5]. Multiple studies and field trials have concluded that some of the stated health benefits are modest or minimal [5, 12,13,14], and most models fail to reduce household air pollution to international standards for the small particles of soot (PM2.5) that penetrate deeply into the lungs
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