Impacts of household energy programs on fuel consumption in Benin, Uganda, and India

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Abstract

This paper presents results of three United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) sponsored field studies which assessed the fuel consumption impacts of household energy programs in Benin, Uganda, and Gujarat, India. These studies expand on a previous round of U.S. EPA supported efforts to build field testing capacity and collect stove performance data in Peru, Nepal, and Maharashtra, India. Daily fuel consumption estimates of traditional and intervention technologies were made using the Kitchen Performance Test (KPT) protocol to determine the potential fuel savings associated with the respective programs. The programs in Benin and Gujarat, India resulted in significant fuel savings of approximately 29% and 61%, respectively. In Uganda, the homes using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) consumed approximately 31% less charcoal than those not using LPG, although the total energy consumption per household was similar between the baseline and LPG user groups.

Introduction

The majority of households in developing countries depend on solid fuels as their primary cooking energy source (Bonjour et al., 2013). The pollutants from combusting solid fuels in inefficient cookstoves are estimated to be responsible for four million premature deaths per year (Lim et al., 2012) and 25% of annual black carbon emissions (Bond et al., 2013).

Growing interest and resources have been focused on finding clean and efficient stoves and fuels, which, when used in place of traditional stoves and fuels, can help mitigate these impacts (Smith, 2010). With this growing interest comes increased scrutiny that impacts attributed to cookstove programs are real and meaningful.

Given the scope of the problem and growing global interest, current, peer-reviewed estimates of fuel savings from in-home assessments are surprisingly limited (Berkeley Air, 2012). Cookstove performance is often assessed through controlled laboratory testing rather than by in-home measurements of performance, as field based assessments generally require more resources and can be logistically intensive. Controlled laboratory testing of cookstoves, while useful for technology development and standardized testing, is often not predictive of real-world performance (Berkeley Air, 2012).

To promote the collection of more field-based cookstove performance data, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) has been supporting coordinated capacity building and field study efforts. The first round of U.S. EPA funded fuel consumption studies, reported in (Johnson et al., 2013), was done with stove programs in Nepal, Peru, and Maharashtra, India. This paper, building on results from the previous projects, presents the second round of fuel consumption studies under this program focusing on a charcoal stove in Benin, an liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) program in Uganda, and a forced-draft wood stove in Gujarat, India. These projects represent a variety of potential household energy solutions whose fuel consumption impacts have not been well characterized.

Section snippets

Kitchen Performance Testing

The Kitchen Performance Test (KPT) protocol used for this study is an uncontrolled, household-level test that measures real-world fuel consumption (Bailis, 2007), for which all household fuels are weighed daily for four continuous days, providing three days of fuel consumption estimates. Fuel was weighed with calibrated, digital, hand-held scales (maximum 50 kg; resolution 0.01 kg), and wood moisture was measured daily where relevant. Household fuel consumption estimates are presented as fuel

Benin

Fuel consumption results for Benin are presented in Table 1, reported as mass and energy equivalent of fuel used per SA per day. Households using Éclair stoves used ~ 18% less charcoal per home (p = 0.02) and 29.5% less charcoal per SA (p < 0.01). These differences are based on means of the entire Éclair and baseline groups, respectively. Within each group, however, there were a variety of stove designs. The majority of traditional charcoal stoves were a version of the Cloporte, though a few

Conclusions and recommendations

The results presented here represent the most recent round of research done as part of the U.S. EPA's larger capacity building program in the household energy sector, complementing the KPT projects presented in Johnson et al. (2013). These studies included many promising technologies that reduced household fuel consumption in regions dependent on solid biomass fuels. The fuel consumption estimates presented here improve our understanding of how household energy programs are performing for end

Acknowledgments

This project was funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (contract number: EP-11-H-000964). We would like to thank the KPT field managers, Prisca Gbossa, Karimou Bagadou, Veena Sharma, Chhaya Bhavsar, Richard Wasirwa, and all of the field surveyors for their hard work to collect the data for this project. We also wish to thank everyone at U.S. EPA; Winrock International; SEWA; GIZ; Center for Research in Energy and Energy Conservation; Center for Integrated Research and

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