Access to modern energy sources has been described as a “necessary, although not sufficient, requirement for economic and social development” (IEA 2002). It is, therefore, of great concern that almost half the world’s population still relies for its everyday household energy needs on inefficient and highly polluting solid fuels, mostly biomass (wood, animal dung, and crop wastes) and coal.

The majority of households using solid fuels burn them in open fires or simple stoves that release most of the smoke into the home. The resulting indoor air pollution (IAP) is a major threat to health, particularly for women and young children, who may spend many hours close to the fire. Furthermore, the reliance on solid fuels and inefficient stoves has other, far-reaching consequences for health, the environment, and economic development.

NATURE, CAUSES, AND BURDEN OF CONDITION 

About 3 billion people still  rely on solid fuels, 2.4 billion on biomass, and the rest on coal, mostly in China (IEA 2002; Smith,Mehta, and Feuz 2004). There is marked regional variation in solid fuel use, from less than 20 percent in Europe and Central Asia to 80 percent and more in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This issue is inextricably linked to poverty. It is the poor who have to make do with solid fuels and inefficient stoves, and many are trapped in this situation: the health and economic consequences contribute to keeping them in poverty, and their poverty stands as a barrier to change. Where socioeconomic circumstances improve, households generally move up the energy ladder, carrying out more activities with fuels and appliances that are increasingly efficient, clean, convenient, and more expensive. The pace of progress, however, is extremely slow, and for the poorest people in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, there is little prospect of change.

Illustrated in figures 42.1 and 42.2 are findings for Malawi and Peru, respectively, from Demographic and Health Surveys (ORC Macro 2004). The examples are selected from available national studies with data on main cooking fuel use to represent the situation in poor African and South American countries. The main rural and urban cooking fuels are illustrated in figures 42.1a and 42.2a; the findings are then broken down nationally by level of education of the principal respondent (woman of childbearing age) in figures 42.1b and 42.2b, and in urban areas by her level of education in figures 42.1c and 42.2c. Biomass is predominantly, though not exclusively, a rural fuel: indeed, in many poor African countries, biomass is the main fuel for close to 100 percent of rural homes. Marked socioeconomic differences (indicated by women’s education) exist in both urban and rural areas. During the 1990s, use of traditional fuels (biomass) in Sub-Saharan Africa increased as a percentage of total energy use, although in most other parts of the world the trend has generally been the reverse (World Bank 2002).

In many poorer countries, the increase in total energy use accompanying economic development has occurred mainly through increased consumption of modern fuels by better-off minorities. In Sub-Saharan Africa, however, the relative increase in biomass use probably reflects population growth in rural and poor urban areas against a background of weak (or negative) national economic growth. Reliable data on trends inhousehold energy use are not available for most countries.

Information is available from India, where the percentage of rural homes using firewood fell from 80 percent in 1993–94 to 75 percent in 1999–2000 (D’Sa and Narasimha Murthy 2004). Nationally, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) use increased from 9 to16 percent over the same period, with a change from 2 percent to 5 percent in rural areas, and it is expected to reach 36 percent nationally and 12 percent for rural homes by 2016. International Energy Agency projections to 2030 show that, although a reduction in residential biomass use is expected in most developing countries, in Africa and South Asia the decline will be small, and the population relying on biomass will increase from 2.4 billion to 2.6 billion, with more than 50 percent of residential energy consumption still derived from this source(OECD and IEA 2004). The number of people without access to electricity is expected to fall from 1.6 billion to 1.4 billion. Because electricity is used by poor households for lighting and not as a cleaner substitute for cooking, electrification will not, at least in the short to medium term, bring about substantial reductions in IAP.