Urban demand for cooking fuels in two major African cities and implications for policy

Nearly 2.3 billion people lack access to clean cooking fuels and technologies worldwide, representing a critical failure to achieve SDG7’s cooking energy access goal. In Sub-Saharan Africa, dependence on polluting cooking fuels is particularly high, resulting in considerable environmental, health, and time-related costs. Progress in the region has been greatest in urban areas, partly because incomes are higher and alternative fuels more widely available than in rural areas, but understanding of the dynamics of urban cooking energy transitions remains limited, and reasons for the divergent paths of different cities are unclear. Our primary objective is, therefore, to understand differences in the demand for several fuels among low-income households in two contrasting cities–Nairobi, where the transition is well advanced (N = 354), and Dar es Salaam, where progress has been slower (N = 1,100). We conducted a double-bounded, dichotomous choice contingent valuation experiment to elucidate how urban households would respond to changes in cooking fuels’ prices. Our analysis shows that fuel price responses vary across the income distribution and across these cities. Willingness to pay for the most commonly used cooking fuel in Nairobi–liquefied petroleum gas–is nearly twice that in Dar es Salaam, where more households prefer charcoal. In Dar es Salaam, low-income charcoal users appear especially entrenched in their cooking fuel choice. Our results have important implications for the effectiveness of different policy tools (e.g., bans, taxes, or clean fuel subsidies), since responses to pricing policies will depend on these varying price sensitivities, as well as targeting and the readiness of the supply chain (including policy enablers of supply) to meet increased demand. In conclusion, though policies are commonly designed at the national-level, policy-makers need to understand nuances in the local demand context very well when choosing instruments that best support energy transition among their most vulnerable citizens.Author summary: Though populations in urban areas are more rapidly progressing towards SDG7’s universal clean cooking access goals, there is limited understanding of cooking energy transitions in cities in low- and middle- income countries. The impacts of policy instruments in fostering urban energy transition remain particularly unclear. This paper considers the demand for several cooking fuels among low-income households in two such contrasting cities–Nairobi (where the clean cooking energy transition is well advanced) and Dar es Salaam (where progress has been slower). We show that the willingness to pay for the most commonly used clean cooking fuel–liquefied petroleum gas–among the poor in Nairobi is nearly twice that in Dar es Salaam, where households prefer charcoal. In Dar es Salaam, low-income charcoal users appear more entrenched in their cooking fuel choice and less likely to switch to LPG. LPG subsidies targeted to low-income households appear especially crucial for fostering LPG uptake and regular use. The extent to which policy tools (e.g., taxes, fees) can be effective also depends crucially on the readiness of the supply side to meet increased demand, and complementary mechanisms (e.g., reducing upfront clean stove investments, efficient supply networks for fuel refills, information and behavior change campaigns).