Universal Energy Access: the role of Clean Cooking and Climate Change Impacts

Transition towards clean cooking. The aim of the project was to provide knowledge on the conditions for supporting an inclusive transition towards cleaner cooking in Tanzania and exploring potential impacts on health and climate. The findings can give relevant knowledge also for other developing economies with heavy reliance on solid biomass fuels. Through inter-disciplinary research, the project has explored conditions for supporting an inclusive transition towards cleaner cooking solutions for household energy use. Combining social and natural science perspectives, the project has specifically addressed four dimensions of a transition to cleaner cooking: 1) Health: Measuring exposure to health-damaging air pollutants from the use of cooking fuels. 2) Climate: Projecting a country’s long-term mitigation potential with cleaner cooking. 3) Household: Understanding challenges and solutions of cooking energy use from a household perspective. 4) Framework conditions: National and international enablers for scaling up access to cleaner cooking. Health: Household Air Pollution (HAP) ranks as the ninth leading risk factor for premature mortality globally. Tanzanian households face a substantial disease burden from HAP, constituting one of the largest environmental risk factors leading to excess deaths. Our results found very low levels of exposures in peri-urban Dar es Salaam on the day of monitoring and did not show significant differences in PM2.5 between cooking with charcoal and LPG. For instance, charcoal stoves were lit outside homes before being moved inside the kitchen for cooking, limiting indoor exposures. The results demonstrate the importance of conducting research in a real-life context which can differ from laboratory settings. Climate: We estimate a reduction in the global temperature from a transition to clean cooking relative to the baseline. While emissions will increase, mainly due to a growing population, we estimate a reduction in global temperature in 2100 between -0.63 and -2.9 milli °C from the transition relative to the baseline. The main drivers of this temperature decrease are increasing renewable energy in the electricity mix and increased use of LPG for cooking. Further, fuelwood demand is reduced leading to reduced deforestation and reduced emissions of black carbon and methane. Cooking with charcoal has the highest climate impact per meal when including indirect emissions of production, while electricity and LPG have the smallest impacts. Household: We have investigated cooking practices and related energy choices in peri-urban and urban areas in Kinondoni district, in Dar es Salaam. Among our survey respondents, 79% of households combine different fuels. Charcoal and LPG are the most common fuels used. Social differences influence fuel choice by affecting affordability. LPG, promoted by private sector actors, is popular in urban areas, but many struggle with the bulk payments for refill cylinders. PayGo LPG overcomes this barrier by allowing consumers to purchase fuel in small amounts. It is common to retain some charcoal in the cooking energy mix even for households who do not struggle to afford modern, clean alternatives. Our findings indicate, however, that such households gradually use less charcoal over time. We find that multiple fuel use also serves as a steppingstone for the energy transition by enabling flexible use of new technologies and building new competencies using them. The household interviews indicate that the government’s efforts to address gender inequality in terms of education, income and livelihood opportunities in Tanzania has had a positive effect on cleaner cooking. When women’s time is valued (e.g. for employed work), time-efficient cooking solutions may be more prioritized. Framework conditions: The recent Clean Cooking Conference in Tanzania has resulted in increased attention to clean cooking, and the establishment of a national clean cooking taskforce. A clean cooking strategy is being developed. The different energy systems for cooking have distinct challenges and sociotechnical dynamics, and need to be addressed in specific ways. The charcoal sector is deeply embedded in rural livelihoods and contributes significantly to forestry revenue, but faces neglect in energy sector policy planning. Our findings suggest that efforts to scale up access to modern and clean cooking energy in the past may have been hampered by a lack of coordination of interventions and short-term support from development partners. Further, the main actors engaged in the energy transition in Tanzania do not focus on clean cooking, or do not sufficiently engage with the end-user perspectives and challenges. The main narratives are also to some extent ‘locked in’ to particular technology trajectories, which differ from household cooking practices. This work was led by CICERO and with NMBU, University of Liverpool, and University of Dar es Salaam as partners.

The 4CImpacts project occurred simultaneously while the policy field on clean cooking in Tanzania was changing. We have, through the project, contributed to and enabled this policy process, for instance by holding a workshop on clean cooking in Dar es Salaam that gathered many of the relevant actors in the field. An important milestone event in the field was the Clean Cooking Conference held in Dar es Salaam in November 2022. A task force was recently initiated from the President and the Ministry of Energy to develop a strategy for clean cooking in Tanzania towards 2033. Further, a Rural Energy Master Plan with a section specifically on cooking energy and related targets for 2030 was launched in 2023. A long-term impact of the 4CImpacts project is likely a contribution to a transition to electricity, LPG, and other clean cooking fuels in Tanzanian households, leading to health and climate benefits, as well as to inform other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa that are going through similar transitions. Our research will help decisionmakers recognize the complexities of the household sector as the primary ‘actor’ in energy transitions and realize the complexity of framework conditions and the need for localized, integrated, and economically sensitive approaches to drive a transition towards cleaner cooking practices. The outcome for the project participants is increased interdisciplinary knowledge on the household cooking field and a stronger research collaboration across countries and between research partners.

Half the world relies on biomass energy for cooking, indoor heating, and heating for sanitation. Firewood and charcoal constitutes 4/5 of Total Primary Energy Supply in many countries in the global South. Inefficient combustion in traditional stoves has direct negative impact on people’s health and their wellbeing, forest resources and global climate. Can energy poverty be addressed while also mitigating climate change and deforestation? The project 4CImpacts presents a novel approach for addressing the interlinked issues in SDG 3, 5, 7 and 13: Health, gender, clean energy and climate. Transition to Clean Cooking Technologies and alternative energy sources is at the nexus of addressing the interlinked challenges of deforestation, indoor air pollution and climate change. The project is mainly focusing on LPG, while considering energy transition in general. Our research is specifically on Tanzania; however, the findings will be applicable and relevant for most of sub-Saharan Africa. The objective is to provide knowledge on the conditions that need to be in place to support more equitable uptake of LPG as clean cooking fuel of scale in Tanzania, as well as develop a better understanding of the potential positive impacts of an energy transition. The 4CImpacts project team is interdisciplinary to develop new knowledge on this broad topic. Among the research challenges are the interdisciplinary nature of the project and the reliance of successful field work in Tanzania, both of with the project team has experience with. By combining social sciences and natural sciences, modelling of health and climate impacts will be combined with a critical view of the messy, complex realities on the ground, which together makes the results as realistic as possible. A key societal impact expected is growing access to Clean Cooking Technology for households in Tanzania, which can improve the quality of life for people in resource poor settings, especially for women and children.