Household Energy Choices Research Articles

The Significance of Culture as a Household Energy Determinant: The Case of Chiwundura Communal Area, Zimbabwe

Household energy choices have always been associated with, household income, size education and accessibility and affordability. Little attention has been paid to behavioural and cultural factors regarding the determinants of households' energy choices. This study attempts to show the significance of culture as a household energy determinant in Chiwundura Communal Area in Zimbabwe. The study employed interviews and observations in data collection. In analysing the data, the research looked at the trends of the responses from the interviewees. Themes were then developed and these were then analysed. It was established that behavioural and cultural practices, lifestyles and food preferences were important in the continued reliance on fuelwood as a cooking energy form. Respondents from households mentioned that food prepared over a traditional cooking stove was tastier than food that was prepared on an electrical stove. The traditional fire had multiple uses that included space heating, preservation of food and seed, flavouring meat and fish as well as acting as a social focus. Traditional fires remain an important aspect in the lives of Chiwundura Communal Area households. Therefore it is recommended that further research on the importance of culture and behavioural factors as energy determinants should be conducted. It is important for development agencies and other stakeholders such as the government to develop sustainable ways of utilising fuelwood as households will continue to rely on it.

Going beyond incomes: Dimensions of cooking energy transitions in rural India

Most studies on household energy choices have considered income and education as suitable proxies for socio-cultural contexts, primarily because the available data on household energy is from census surveys which are mainly household consumption surveys, not focused energy surveys. Acknowledging the existing data constraints, a more focussed household energy survey was designed for rural India with the aim of better understanding determinants of current energy use patterns, energy choices, to measure the impacts of these factors, and importantly, arrive at key policy insights. This paper revisits the definition of access to include for reliability and quality going beyond conventional understanding. It also relooks at the role of gender in household energy choices. Having established that apart from income, socio-cultural factors may have a greater role in determining household energy choices, the model results indicate electricity access would have a positive impact on cooking energy choices only after meeting a minimum threshold requirement. As women move towards more formal employment, the odds of choosing cleaner fuels increase significantly. Thus, while macro-policies may provide important guidelines and the necessary framework, implementation strategies need to be designed at the local level through a participatory approach making energy an integral part of the development paradigm.

Better air for better health: Forging synergies in policies for energy access, climate change and air pollution

Air pollution and its related health impacts are a global concern. This paper addresses how current policies on air pollution, climate change and access to clean cooking fuels can effectively reduce both outdoor and household air pollution and improve human health. A state of the art modeling framework is used that combines an integrated assessment model and an atmospheric model to estimate the spatial extent and distribution of outdoor air pollution exposures. Estimates of household energy access and use are modeled by accounting for heterogeneous household energy choices and affordability constraints for rural and urban populations spanning the entire income distribution. Results are presented for 2030 for a set of policy scenarios on air pollution, climate change and energy access and include spatially explicit emissions of air pollutants; ambient concentrations of PM2.5; and health impacts in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) from both ambient and household air pollution. The results stress the importance of enforcing current worldwide air quality legislation in addressing the impacts of outdoor air pollution. A combination of stringent policies on outdoor air pollution, climate change and access to clean cooking fuels is found to be effective in achieving reductions in average ambient PM2.5 exposures to below World Health Organization recommended levels for a majority of the world's population and results in a significant decline in the global burden of disease from both outdoor and household air pollution.

Household energy choices and fuelwood consumption: An econometric approach using French data

This study proposes an econometric analysis of household fuelwood demand in France. The choice concerning the energy used for heating is modeled, stressing the combination between one type of energy used as a main source and another one used as a back-up. This endogenous decision has an impact on fuelwood consumption and is taken into account to avoid biased estimates of price and income elasticities. The results show that the choice of energy mix is determined by the income and the socio-economic characteristics of households, and that fuelwood consumption is price-sensitive in the case where wood is the main source of energy.

Comprehending household cooking energy choice in rural India

Abstract Energy is essential to attain the quality of life and economic prosperity in a society. In the rural areas of India, cooking dominates the aggregate consumption of energy. This energy demand is mostly met by biomass fuels, which have many associated inherent disadvantages. Hence, it is important to understand the decision making process in rural households regarding the choice of cooking fuels. For this purpose, household information using the 61st round of National Sample Survey is analyzed for the rural parts of India. The logistic regression model is used to explain the determinants of clean fuel use for cooking purposes. The study shows that number of educated females between 10 and 50 years of age, average household education index, regular salary, and monthly per capita consumption expenditure have a positive and significant impact on probability of using clean cooking fuels, whereas possessing a Below Poverty Line ration card, belonging to reserved caste categories, family size and size of farm land have a significant negative linkage.

Assessment of environmental and economic costs of rural household energy consumption in Loess Hilly Region, Gansu Province, China

Due to poverty, serious soil erosion and shortage of rural household energy in Loess Hilly Region, Gansu Province, China, excessive consumption of biofuel has become a critical factor underlying eco-environment degeneration. Data on rural household energy use was obtained by questionnaires, and based on substitutable analysis, environmental and economic costs under different energy consumption structures were estimated using a quantitative model. The results show that annual energy consumption per household is 2112.44 kgce and per capita 428.59 kgce, a low level. The total annual energy consumption cost per household is 1925.25 yuan, of which environmental cost is 621.13 yuan and economic cost 1304.52 yuan. Commercial energy has been used widely. The per household annual cash payment for commercial energy is 536.51 yuan, 8.69% of household net income. Exclusive use of solar energy and biogas obviously decreases energy consumption cost, cash payout and energy source availability being the main criteria for household energy choice. To compare with the actual structure of energy usage, there are clear differences in the total cost, environment cost, economic cost and cash payout for households among the four substitutable structures. All costs are lower when biogas and solar energy are used, so this structure is the primary direction that rural energy should adopt in the future.

Household energy preferences for cooking in urban Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

An extensive survey on household expenditures in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, was used to analyze the factors determining urban household energy choices using a multinomial logit model. Wood-energy remains the preferred fuel of most urban households in the country; though rational, the choice is not sustainable as it portends a threat to the savanna woodlands and the economy. Many important policies have been adopted by public authorities to minimize household wood-energy consumption and to substitute it by alternative fuel. Despite the magnitude of all these policies, the depletion rate of the forest resource is increasing. A kind of inertia is thus observed for household preferences for cooking fuel. This model analyzes the sociological and economic variables of household energy preferences for cooking in Ouagadougou. The analyses show that the inertia of household cooking energy preferences are due to poverty factors such as low income, poor household access to electricity for primary and secondary energy, low house standard, household size, high frequency of cooking certain meals using woodfuel as cooking energy. The descriptive analyses show that the domestic demand for wood-energy is strongly related to household income. The firewood utilization rate decreases with increasing household income. In other words, this fuel appears as a “transition good” for these households which aim for other sources of energy for cooking that are more adapted for urban consumption. This implies that a price subsidy policy for liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and its cook stoves could significantly decrease the utilization rate of wood-energy.