Losing the Energy to Cook: An Exploration of Modern Food Systems and Energy Consumption in Domestic Kitchens (original) (raw)
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Environment, Development and Sustainability, 2021
The use of low efficient cookstoves has several severe negative impacts. Burning solid fuels kills about 4 million people every year, a number which is higher than the combined impact of HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Moreover, most of the people affected are located in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing countries, where over 80% of the population still relies on biomass as their primary source of energy, being the electricity access only 43%. Low-efficiency cooking systems are also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions since solid fuel cooking in Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 1.2 and 6% of global CO2 and black carbon emissions, respectively. Furthermore, widespread biomass collection by an increasing population in Sub-Saharan Africa is unsustainable, contributing to deforestation. Therefore, the impact of using traditional cooking systems is a challenge for the achievement of sustainable development targets in Sub-Saharan Africa and as a whole global...
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For the past 40 years, the dominant ‘policy’ on cooking energy in the Global South has been to improve the combustion efficiency of biomass fuels. This was said to alleviate the burdens of biomass cooking for three billion people by mitigating emissions, reducing deforestation, alleviating expenditure and collection times on fuels and increasing health outcomes. By 2015, international agencies were openly saying it was a failing policy. The dispersal of improved cookstoves was not keeping up with population growth, increasing urbanisation was leading to denser emissions and evidence suggested health effects of improved stoves were not as expected. A call was made for a new strategy, something other than ‘business as usual’. Conventional wisdom suggests that access to electricity is poor in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), that it is too expensive and that weak grids prevent even connected households from cooking. Could a new strategy be built around access to electricity (and gas)? Could b...
Forests
Over half of the world’s population lack access to modern energy cooking services (MECS) and instead rely on locally harvested biomass for fuel. The collection and burning of such biomass for cooking have significant negative social, health, economic and environmental impacts and is a major sustainability challenge. The adverse development impacts from households’ continued dependence on polluting stove-and-fuel combinations are significant. Household Air Pollution (HAP) from biomass fuel use accounts for some 4.3 million premature deaths each year, disproportionately affecting women and children. Fuel harvesting and use represent a significant time burden for women and girls. Time savings can be realized through multiple pathways. Understanding the importance of timesaving as a factor in the adoption of clean cooking is thus important in informing the design of cookstove programs and their marketing approach. The systematic evidence evaluation of drivers of and barriers to adoption...
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2020
The cooking of food is a nexus point for multiple issues. Cooking is intertwined with dietary choices, affects the nutrient content and environmental impacts of food, and is linked to time use and gender roles in the home. Due to its intersectionality, changing cooking practices can potentially impact upon multiple Sustainable Development Goals. However, cookery is seldom considered in the wider perspective of a sustainable food system - with only ethnographic studies examining how cooking is performed being the norm. Overall there is a limited evidence base at the population level of how different nations/populations currently cook, and how changing this would result in changes to the environment, consumer health, and economy. The current research aims to create a wider evidence base to demonstrate and quantify why cooking and food practices are important, and how they differ by geography. In this research we piloted a ~40 minute survey using the Qualtrics online survey panel in 6 ...
Over 80% of rural residents in the developing world utilize biomass as their principal fuel, with serious consequences for their health, climate change, household economics and personal well-being. This problem requires a Sustainability approach which this thesis does by bringing together several theories- transition management, socio-technical regimes, diffusion and livelihoods, bridging multi-disciplines, incorporating different forms of knowledge as well as including a future orientation. A deep literature review of biomass cooking was conducted and fieldwork carried out during the summer of 2009 in the village of La Comunidad, El Salvador. Over forty interviews were completed, principally with households utilizing an improved wood-burning cookstove (ICS). Based on the literature and the fieldwork, a Vision for a Sustainable cooking system is developed, which includes criteria for health, climate change, household financial and non-financial costs and the cooking experience. Strategies for achieving this vision are examined next. For several reasons, modern fuels such as electricity and gas (LPG) are not strategies which will on their own achieve the Sustainable Vision. Another strategy, efficient, biomass-burning stoves appears to have potential, but its viability is still largely unverified. This thesis focuses on an ICS known as the Justa, which was disseminated in La Comunidad in 2007. Using the diffusion framework the adoption of the Justa ICS in this community is examined. The Justa has been successfully adopted and not a single household has become disenchanted and abandoned it. The decision process and other variables which influenced the adoption of the Justa are also scrutinized. This work yields several possibilities for enhancing the transition to a Sustainable cooking system. It has long been assumed that households will switch completely to modern fuels, once given the means and the opportunity. My fieldwork in El Salvador confirms other research showing that households actually stack fuels and stoves, rather than switching between them. Stacking does not seem to be a transitory phase while studying it reveals important information about household preferences, strategies and constraints. This paper proposes that the Sustainable Vision can best be achieved through stacking of various cooking technologies, rather than by promoting a single type.
Traditional biomass is a major source of cooking and heating energy in Tanzania. Although Tanzanian energy policy insists on the need to diversify energy sources, the level of diversification at a household level is not well known. This study identified energy use patterns and their associated factors in Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania. Specifically, the study identified the types of cooking fuels and stoves available and used by households, as well as how and why households combined various cooking fuels. The household survey was conducted in 294 randomly selected households in the districts of Rombo and Hai. We found that although biomass is becoming scarce, it is still a major source of cooking energy, combined with the traditional cooking stove. Only 10.2% of the households reported full-time use of improved biomass cookstoves (ICS). The rest combined ICS with the traditional stove, threatening the sustainability of the biomass resource. It was found that 15% of ICS used by households were abandoned due to various technical flaws. Factors like woodlot ownership, kitchen location, electric grid connection, quality of living, and sources of firewood were associated with partial switching of households to either transition fuels or cleaner fuels. We conclude that energy use patterns in this region demonstrate a partial switching of fuel source, because some households use transition fuels or cleaner fuels combined with firewood. Fuel diversification focused more on cooking with biomass than moving to cleaner fuels. This implies that biomass will continue to be a major source of cooking fuels for Tanzanian households and, hence, ICS remains the best solution. For ICS to have a broad impact and achieve more widespread use, it is necessary to address some technical problems associated with ICS. The government of Tanzania should revisit the cost of alternative energy sources like LPG to improve their affordability for the masses.
Energies
This paper is a review of research undertaken, and subsequent policy change enacted, in the years 2018 to 2022 regarding the integration of cooking loads and needs into modern energy planning. Building on an earlier paper which described how the dominant global approaches to tackling the enduring problem of biomass-fuelled cooking was failing, and how a new UK Aid programme (Oct 2018) would be seeking to intentionally change international energy policy towards cooking and enable a significant transition in energy use, in this paper we review whether this strategy is being adopted by researchers, governments, and the private sector across the world and whether it is likely to make a significant contribution to the fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goal 7. In particular, the call is for integrated planning of modern energy inclusive of cooking loads—the potential ‘Mutual Support’ that both can lend to each other. The review considers the international commitments made by donors an...
Human energy and time spent by women using cooking energy systems: A case study of Nepal
Energy, 2019
In most developing countries, many rural households use fuelwood and a traditional cookstove (TCS). Women are the backbone of the cooking system, as they mostly manage it. Despite several existing efficient cooking energy systems, households generally do not prefer them. Thus, our aim is to find why this is the case. We estimate the time required and human energy expenditure (HEE) for production of cooking fuel for four alternative cooking energy systems in Nepal, as a case study. The time required to produce cooking fuel for the baseline scenario (i.e. fuelwood and TCS) is 40 hr/cap/yr and HEE is 41 MJ/cap/yr. System 2 (charcoal and TCS) has the highest demand for time and HEE. The results suggest that the most efficient system is System 1 (i.e. fuelwood and an improved cookstove (ICS)). However, a woman produces cooking fuel for the whole household, which multiples her time and HEE demand to the household size. This system analysis indicates a significant influence in the selection of cooking fuel due to the HEE and time demand. It concludes that in the future, more importance should be attached to the labour required from women in the cooking energy systems in the development of technological improvements.
Energy economics of cooking in households in Nepal
Energy, 2004
In most developing countries, many rural households use fuelwood and a traditional cookstove (TCS). Women are the backbone of the cooking system, as they mostly manage it. Despite several existing efficient cooking energy systems, households generally do not prefer them. Thus, our aim is to find why this is the case. We estimate the time required and human energy expenditure (HEE) for production of cooking fuel for four alternative cooking energy systems in Nepal, as a case study. The time required to produce cooking fuel for the baseline scenario (i.e. fuelwood and TCS) is 40 h/cap/yr and HEE is 41 MJ/ cap/yr. System 2 (charcoal and TCS) has the highest demand for time and HEE. The results suggest that the most efficient system is System 1 (i.e. fuelwood and an improved cookstove (ICS)). However, a woman produces cooking fuel for the whole household, which multiples her time and HEE demand to the household size. This system analysis indicates a significant influence in the selection of cooking fuel due to the HEE and time demand. It concludes that in the future, more importance should be attached to the labour required from women in the cooking energy systems in the development of technological improvements.