Climate and health benefits of a transition from gas to electric cooking.

Household electrification is thought to be an important part of a carbon-neutral future and could also have additional benefits to adopting households such as improved air quality. However, the effectiveness of specific electrification policies in reducing total emissions and boosting household livelihoods remains a crucial open question in both developed and developing countries. We investigated a transition of more than 750,000 households from gas to electric cookstoves-one of the most popular residential electrification strategies-in Ecuador following a program that promoted induction stoves and assessed its impacts on electricity consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and health. We estimate that the program resulted in a 5% increase in total residential electricity consumption between 2015 and 2021. By offsetting a commensurate amount of cooking gas combustion, we find that the program likely reduced national greenhouse gas emissions, thanks in part to the country's electricity grid being 80% hydropower in later parts of the time period. Increased induction stove uptake was also associated with declines in all-cause and respiratory-related hospitalizations nationwide. These findings suggest that, when the electricity grid is largely powered by renewables, gas-to-induction cooking transitions represent a promising way of amplifying the health and climate cobenefits of net-carbon-zero policies.

Current respiratory symptoms and risk factors in pregnant women cooking with biomass fuels in rural Ghana.

BACKGROUND: More than 75% of the population in Ghana relies on biomass fuels for cooking and heating. Household air pollution (HAP) emitted from the incomplete combustion of these fuels has been associated with adverse health effects including respiratory effects in women that can lead to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a major contributor to global HAP-related mortality. HAP is a modifiable risk factor in the global burden of disease, exposure to which can be reduced. OBJECTIVE: This study assessed the prevalence of respiratory symptoms, as well as associations between respiratory symptoms and HAP exposure, as measured using continuous personal carbon monoxide (CO), in nonsmoking pregnant women in rural Ghana. METHODS: We analyzed current respiratory health symptoms and CO exposures upon enrollment in a subset (n = 840) of the population of pregnant women cooking with biomass fuels and enrolled in the GRAPHS randomized clinical control trial. Personal CO was measured using Lascar continuous monitors. Associations between CO concentrations as well as other sources of pollution exposures and respiratory health symptoms were estimated using logistic regression models. CONCLUSION: There was a positive association between CO exposure per 1 ppm increase and a composite respiratory symptom score of current cough (lasting >5 days), wheeze and/or dyspnea (OR: 1.2, p = 0.03). CO was also positively associated with wheeze (OR: 1.3, p = 0.05), phlegm (OR: 1.2, p = 0.08) and reported clinic visit for respiratory infection in past 4 weeks (OR: 1.2, p = 0.09). Multivariate models showed significant associations between second-hand tobacco smoke and a composite outcome (OR: 2.1, p < 0.01) as well as individual outcomes of cough >5 days (OR: 3.1, p = 0.01), wheeze (OR: 2.7, p < 0.01) and dyspnea (OR: 2.2, p = 0.01). Other covariates found to be significantly associated with respiratory outcomes include involvement in charcoal production business and dyspnea, and involvement in burning grass/field and wheeze. Results suggest that exposure to HAP increases the risk of adverse respiratory symptoms among pregnant women using biomass fuels for cooking in rural Ghana.

Ghana's Rural Liquefied Petroleum Gas Program Scale Up: A case study.

BACKGROUND: The Government of Ghana launched the Rural LPG (RLP) promotion program in 2013 as part of its efforts to reduce fuelwood consumption. The aim of the RLP is to contribute to Ghana's overarching goal to provide LPG access to 50% of Ghana's population by 2020. The RLP has not announced long-term program objectives. However, in the interim the RLP targeted a cumulative total of 170,000 LPG cookstoves to rural households by the end of 2017. As of November 2017, 149,500 rural households had received the LPG cook stoves. Our case study documents Ghana's experiences to date with LPG scale up. METHODS: We carried out a desktop review/document analysis of literature on the RLP. Each document was reviewed for information related to the elements of the Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance (RE-AIM) framework as it pertained to LPG promotion and adoption. In-depth interviews were held among key stakeholders in Ghana. Previously collected data from a field evaluation of the RLP was also assessed. FINDINGS: Generally, our evaluation suggests that the current form of the RLP is not achieving its stated goal. Our evaluation of the RLP in five rural communities showed that about 58% of households had never refilled their LPG cylinders nine months after the initial delivery of a filled cylinder. Only 8% still used their LPG at 18 months post distribution. Cost and distance to LPG filling stations were the main reasons for low LPG use. Beneficiaries did not exclusively use their LPG even at the initial stages when all of them had LPG in their cylinders. Ghana is currently undergoing transitions in the LPG sector including a change from the current private cylinder ownership model to a cylinder recirculation model for the distribution of LPG. There was no evidence of a well-documented implementation framework for the RLP. CONCLUSION: Fuel cost, poor LPG access, and an inadequate implementation framework hinder the RLP implementation.