Primary Household Energy for Cooking and Heating in 52 Developing Economies
Recent household surveys from 52 developing economies that include questions about energy use show that the most commonly cited primary energy for cooking is wood, followed by gas, natural gas and, where natural gas is not available, liquefied petr...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/175061626156674951/Primary-Household-Energy-for-Cooking-and-Heating-in-52-Developing-Economies http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35947 |
| Summary: | Recent household surveys from 52
developing economies that include questions about energy use
show that the most commonly cited primary energy for cooking
is wood, followed by gas, natural gas and, where natural gas
is not available, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and then by
electricity. Biogas use is rare, and the use of ethanol and
solar cookers is essentially non-existent. Households in the
economies with a very high share of the population relying
on clean energy as the primary source for cooking
overwhelmingly prefer gas over electricity. In two-thirds of
the economies more than half of the rich cook with clean
energy, again preferring gas over electricity. As income
rises and natural gas infrastructure becomes better
established, urban households shift from LPG to natural gas,
leaving LPG primarily for rural households. By contrast, in
low-income and some lower-middle-income economies even the
rich cook primarily with charcoal or kerosene (usually
preferring charcoal over kerosene), while LPG is used by
some well-off urban households. In one out of every six
economies less than one-tenth of the population in the top
20 percent cites clean energy as their primary energy source
for cooking. The choice of gas is driven in many instances
by historical fuel price subsidy policies, which in some
cases have continued to this day. Where natural gas is not
available and LPG has not been subsidized but electricity
has historically been reliable and cheap, such as in
Southern Africa, the rich cook with electricity. Aside from
price and supply reliability, community-wide familiarity
with a particular technology and fuel, and economies of
scale arising from popular use, may be partially driving the
pattern of each economy’s showing dominant preference for
gas or electricity. |
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