How Much Does Clean Cooking Reduce Emissions?, with Susanna Berkouwer

In this episode, Daniel Raimi talks with Susanna Berkouwer about their research on reducing the economic and environmental costs of energy access through a simple piece of technology: charcoal-burning cookstoves. Access to electricity is limited in low-income countries, which means that access to clean cooking in those countries is limited, too. Some areas of the world have shifted to using liquefied petroleum gas for their cooking, but Sub-Saharan Africa is trending toward higher use of biomass-burning cookstoves, which produce emissions that can harm human health and lead to local or regional deforestation. An assistant professor in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Berkouwer and their colleagues applied a randomized experimental design with 1,000 households in Sub-Saharan Africa, aiming to see whether alternatives to charcoal-intensive cookstoves can reduce both the cost of energy and the negative environmental impacts. The conclusions are strong and striking: Corroborating results show that improvements in cookstove efficiency come with more efficient biomass use and cost savings, and the fiscal cost of subsidizing cookstoves is hundreds of times more efficient than other means of decarbonization. Berkouwer’s randomized study quantifies these gains in cost-efficiency, reductions in environmental pollution, and potential policy redundancies, opening up space for new climate solutions.

References and recommendations:

“The Cost-Effectiveness of Clean Cookstove Carbon Mitigation After Adjusting for Additionality and Impact” by Susanna B. Berkouwer and Joshua T. Dean; https://doi.org/10.1142/S2010007826500089

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