Four Out Of Five People In Africa Use Wood For Cooking: A Transition To Clean Fuels Would Cut Emissions And Save Lives, A Model For Nigeria Shows

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Four in every five people in Africa cook using wood, charcoal and other polluting fuels in open fires or inefficient stoves. This releases harmful pollutants and leads to respiratory illnesses and heart disease, particularly among children.

Household air pollution, mostly from cooking smoke, is linked to over 700,000 premature deaths a year in Africa .

Nigeria is one of the countries where the problem is most acute. In the country's rural areas, only 5% of the population has access to clean cooking fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas and electricity.

In 2021, Nigeria announced ambitious plans to transition to clean cooking energy for all by 2060, mainly driven by liquefied petroleum gas. These plans have been recently adopted into law as part of the National Clean Cooking Policy.

Read more: Cooking with 'dirty' fuels affects women's mental health

Nigeria's transition towards clean cooking had begun gaining momentum before an economic crisis started unfolding in 2022 . In 2019, cooking gas was used by 24% of urban households , up from just 7% a decade before. This increase was driven by government and private-sector innovation .

The price of cooking gas has increased since then. Amid a general cost-of-living crisis caused by biting inflation , this has threatened to undo much of the progress.

We've spent the past five years researching Nigeria's transition towards sustainable development and decarbonisation. Our most recent research , a modelling exercise informed by interviews with experts, delved into Nigeria's clean cooking energy transition.

Our research found a transition from wood to clean fuels like cooking gas could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cooking. A rapid but achievable transition away from wood could prevent over 200,000 premature deaths annually from household air pollution. This includes more than 44,000 deaths among children under five.

This means about 7.2 million lives saved over the next three decades. Moving away from cooking with wood will also reduce deforestation. Our research found that if Nigeria continues as it is, the country's carbon dioxide emissions will triple by 2060.

For our research we asked: what would be the impact of meeting the current national goals, and what would be the cost of inaction?

We interviewed experts from the liquefied petroleum gas, biomass and other cooking energy value chains and analysed clean cooking access scenarios for Nigeria until 2060.

Based on their perspectives, we developed three scenarios for Nigeria's clean cooking transition: a business-as-usual, a moderate, and an ambitious transformative scenario.

Business as usual: This pessimistic scenario assumes that policies to increase access to clean cooking technologies would not be implemented. It is based on the population continuing to increase and continuing to use wood for cooking. This scenario would result in a dramatic 77% increase in annual premature deaths by 2060. It would mean between 90,000 and 100,000 children under five dying prematurely every year as a result of indoor air pollution.

Read more: Ghana needs to stop households from using firewood: what must be done

Moderate scenario: This is a scenario that sees significant improvements but does not put the sector on the path toward universal access to clean cooking. The use of liquefied petroleum gas continues to increase into the 2050s, eventually becoming the primary technology, but a large share of households still use inefficient biomass stoves in 2040. Under this scenario, annual premature deaths peak in 2050 and start to decrease slightly afterwards.

Ambitious, transformative scenario: This is the best-case scenario. Under this scenario, there would be a large shift from traditional biomass to clean cooking technologies. The cooking sector would be transformed.

However, this requires investments, improvement in financing and policy measures. In this scenario, 85 million households achieve access to clean cooking by 2060. There would be a strong decrease in household air pollution. This scenario would result in a 7% decrease in annual premature deaths – preventing over 200,000 premature deaths from household air pollution per year. Among them would be more than 44,000 children under five. It would save over 7 million lives over the next three decades.

Investments in clean cooking can make a huge impact in Nigeria. Our findings also show how high the cost of inaction would be.

The experiences of countries like Brazil and Indonesia demonstrate that a rapid transition towards healthier, cleaner cooking is possible where there is concerted policy and strong political will.

Our research points to very specific areas in which the Nigerian government needs to be transparent in its goals and plans to attract investment in the sector:

• Revisit and revise government targets for cooking energy, in particular the Energy Transition Plan. This needs to better align with current and projected economic realities. For example, electricity is still unreliable and insufficient, with frequent episodes of grid collapse .

• Pay greater attention to the drivers of demand and behavioural patterns . This means, for example, a better understanding of how households respond to fluctuations in prices and switch between fuels.

• Make clean cooking affordable by providing families with access to finance to support the switch to clean cooking, and make sure there is enough distribution infrastructure such as cooking gas refuelling stations to ensure reliability of supply.

• Ensure that plans and policies like the National Clean Cooking Policy anticipate and mitigate the effects of future macroeconomic shocks on cooking fuel prices.

• Measure household cooking energy patterns regularly across the country and across households of different incomes. This will help keep track of the pace of the cooking energy transition.

• Integrate detailed and transparent evaluations of health impacts from cooking energy and emissions from land use change and forest degradation into Nigeria's energy transition planning.

It is time for Nigeria's government to move beyond bold commitments to decisive action. Despite the current economic challenges, the big picture for Nigeria's clean cooking transition remains: an immediate acceleration of efforts is urgently needed, and both cooking gas and new affordable renewable energy-based technologies provide an opportunity to be seized.

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