Clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa: modeling the cooking fuel mix to 2050

Abstract: As of 2014, 81% of sub-Saharan population or 792 million people rely on the traditional use of biomass to provide in their cooking needs. This situation causes harmful health, environmental, and development hazards with a substantial annual economic cost of USD58.2 billion. The concern about the issue of access to clean cooking facilities is growing as international organizations and national governments define steps to transform the existing situation. Literature provides a good view on determinants for the cooking fuel choice in developing regions, but comprehensive outlooks for the future cooking fuel mix in sub-Saharan countries are limited. To this extent, the presented master's thesis aims to shed light on a history-inspired pathway for the evolution of the biomass dominated cooking fuel mix in sub-Saharan countries to 2050. A quantitative model was developed to estimate the future uptake of various cooking technologies, from which the fuel mix can be derived using energy intensities. Projections were constructed for urban and rural areas in 45 countries. Economic development, population expansion, urbanization, and to a certain extent policies are the key drivers of the model. Despite a moderate improvement in the share of population relying on traditional biomass, 808 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to make use of traditional three-stone fires in 2050, an increase compared to 2014. Biomass remains the dominant cooking fuel as a result of limited switching and the low efficiency of employed stoves. Driven by higher incomes and a better developed infrastructure, urban areas experience a faster shift to modern fuels. Demand for LPG grows at an annual rate of 6% across sub-Saharan Africa, in sharp contrast with the phase out of kerosene and the limited uptake of electric cookstoves. The speed of evolutions is dissimilar across countries because of differences in economic growth and urbanization, and non-homogeneous starting points. The results demonstrate the vast size of the challenge to improve living conditions in sub-Saharan Africa and suggest that universal access by 2030, a target stated by several international organizations, is rather unrealistic.