Household air pollution, health, and climate change – clearing the air

Abstract

Air pollution from use of household solid fuels is now recognized to be a major health risk in developing countries. Accordingly, there has been some shift in development thinking and investment from previous efforts only focused on improving efficiency of household fuel use to those that focus on reducing the exposures to the air pollution that lead to this health impact. Unfortunately, however, this is occurring just as the climate agenda has become to dominate much of the international sustainable development discourse and action. Thus, instead of optimizing approaches that centrally focus on the large health impact, the household energy agenda has been hampered by constraints imposed by a narrow definition of sustainability, one primarily driven by the desire to mitigate greenhouse emissions by relying on renewable biomass fueling so-called improved cookstoves. In reality, however, solid biomass is extremely difficult to burn sufficiently cleanly in household stoves to reach health goals. In comparison to the international development community, however, some large countries, notably Brazil historically and more recently, India, however, have with their own resources substantially expanded the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in their household energy mix, with major impacts on their national energy picture. The net climate impacts of such approaches compared to current biomass stoves are minimal or non-existent and that the social and health benefits are, in contrast, potentially great. LPG can be seen as a transition fuel for clean household energy, with induction stoves powered by renewables as the holy grail (an approach already being adopted by Ecuador). The enormous human and social benefits of clean energy, rather than climate concerns, should dominate the household energy access agenda today