Clean cooking energy transition in Nigeria: Policy implications for Developing countries

Abstract

Lack of access to clean cooking energy systems negatively affects the health and welfare of millions of people in developing countries. Different factors such as household income, household size, fuel price, and information spread have been identified as barriers to the widespread uptake of clean cooking systems. However, analyses exploring the dynamic influences of these factors towards accelerating clean cooking from the long-term perspective are limited. Here, we employ a system dynamics modelling framework to simulate how various strategies could affect the adoption of clean cooking systems in Nigeria over time. Our results reveal that clean cooking adoption is a fluctuating process, and the trends present a non-linear behaviour. We found that the adoption of clean cooking energy systems would occur faster early in the simulating year among urban households than in rural households. The results indicate that, at low prices of liquefied petroleum gas, many rural households will switch to clean cookstoves with higher adoption rates than consumers in urban households. Additionally, results from baseline scenario analysis revealed that, without significant policy interventions, not all households would switch to clean cooking. Our analysis further indicates that households with fewer members tend to transition quicker to clean cooking options than larger households. The impact of clean cooking due to communication among households would be more significant among rural households than among urban households. While the model results are perceptive, we emphasise that potent policies are needed to accelerate the diffusion and adoption of clean cooking energy systems in Nigeria and other African countries.