Cooking is the oldest form of energy use, and stovetop cooking is one of the world’s most energy-consuming activities.
Cooking accounts for less than 10% of energy use in developed countries but represents the lion’s share of domestic energy use in developing countries.
People in industrialised countries can choose from numerous stovetops and ovens using energy sources such as LPG, natural gas and electricity. However, in many parts of the world, the choice of cooking fuel is dictated by availability and cost, which means that more than 2.5 billion people, especially in Asia and Africa, still lack access to clean cooking fuels.
For three billion people living in low-income and middle-income countries, the simple act of cooking is a major health and safety risk. They routinely cook with fuels such as wood, animal dung, coal and kerosene. Burning these types of fuels in open fires or traditional stoves causes harmful household air pollution, resulting in an estimated 3.8 million deaths annually according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and contributes to various health, socio-economic, and environmental problems.
Health effects are concentrated among women, who are more likely to be responsible for cooking, and young children. The work of gathering fuel exposes women and children to safety risks and often consumes 15 or more hours per week, constraining their time available for education, rest and paid work.
Cooking by the numbers
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Cooking energy accounts for about 90% of all household energy consumption in developing countries.
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of staple foods need cooking before they can be eaten.
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In the EU, the energy used for domestic cooking represents 6% of total energy use.
Food is prepared at home and at 23 million food outlets across the world.
India ranked highest on the list for home cooking, with an average of 13.2 hours spent in the kitchen every week.
Today, we cook an average of 6.7 meals per day at home, although this number varies considerably from country to country.
Challenges and solutions
In the industrialised world, many meals are cooked using fossil fuels or electricity generated by thermal power plants. Greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced or avoided by switching to renewable gases or electricity from renewable sources. Furthermore, polluting forms of outdoor cooking, such as coal barbecues, can be replaced with clean-burning gases.
However, the main issues related to cooking are concentrated in the developing world. Cooking with biomass or polluting liquid fuels in developing regions is a major cause of non-communicable diseases, air pollution and deforestation as well as a barrier to social progress. Some 2.4 billion people are without access to clean cooking, costing the world more than US$2.4 trillion in damage to the climate and local economies and contributing to 3.2 million premature deaths each year. Fuel collection is often tasked to women and children, perpetuating the negative socioeconomic and gender inequities of energy poverty by taking away time that could be spent on other activities such as schooling, income generation and socialising.
Household air pollution
Many people cook on open fires, filling their homes with smoke.
Household air pollution was responsible for an estimated 3.2 million deaths per year in 2020, including over 237,000 deaths of children under the age of five.
Household air pollution increases the risk of noncommunicable diseases including stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.
Outdoor air pollution
Household air pollution eventually finds its way outside, and many meals are cooked outdoors on open fires. Outdoor air pollution in both cities and rural areas was estimated to cause 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide per year in 2019. This mortality is due to exposure to fine particulate matter, which causes cardiovascular and respiratory disease and cancers9.
Black carbon (sooty particles) and methane emitted by inefficient stove combustion are powerful climate pollutants. Emissions from non-renewable biomass for cooking amount to 1 Gt/CO2 per year — about 2% of global emissions and up to 4.3% of total emissions in pan-tropical regions, and roughly on a par with emissions from aviation.
Deforestation
Approximately 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from forest degradation are caused by harvesting fuel for cooking.
Up to 34% of wood harvested is unsustainable, contributing to forest degradation and climate change.
Barrier to social progress
Women and children can spend up to ten hours each week gathering fuel, walking ever-greater distances and carrying heavy loads due to forest degradation. In many countries, women spend 1.5 hours each day collecting firewood and four hours are spent cooking.
Women and girls must often walk long distances to obtain cooking fuel, and, as a result, face increased risk of physical and sexual violence. Many children, especially girls, may skip school to help with firewood collection and food preparation.
The role of LPG
The UN has established access to “affordable and clean energy” as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with ambitions to achieve universal access to clean cooking methods by 2030. Liquid Gas, including LPG, plays a key role in achieving this goal. Several countries have launched successful programmes to provide access to liquid fuels, and their impact has been profound and immediate.
There are a range of options to reduce cooking emissions and provide access to clean cooking fuels. These include electric stoves, clean biomass stoves or connections to the natural gas grid.
The International Energy Agency set out in 2022 what it calls the Sustainable Africa (energy) Scenario. This envisages that by 2030, one third of homes would be using LPG, 10% electricity, 10% biogas and 6% alcohol fuels. This leaves 41% still using solid biomass, but on more efficient, cleaner stoves. However, the acceleration required to reach even these projections is staggering. Clean cooking access in sub-Saharan Africa needs to improve around 15 times faster over the 2022-2030 period than it has before. LPG is the only cleaner fuel that ticks all the boxes. It is popular, meets household needs, is easy to store and transport and – crucially – is available now in the quantities needed.
Many governments have already prioritised the rapid scale-up of LPG to secure cleaner cooking and forest protection, alongside active investment in renewables.
Why LPG?
A proven track record
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In 1990, 53% of the global population relied on polluting cooking fuels. This percentage dropped to 36% by 2020. This change was mainly driven by the large-scale adoption of LPG.
In India, national data show the share of population relying on biomass and kerosene declining 30 percentage points between 2010 and 2020, with most now using LPG instead. Since 2015, government figures indicate that an additional 87 million free LPG connections were provided to poor households via the high-profile Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY scheme).
776 million people secured access to clean cooking fuels since 2010, with China and India accounting for 570 million people, thanks to LPG programmes and clean air policies.
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In Morocco, LPG accounts for 63% of total domestic energy consumption and increased by 50% between 2007 and 2017 whilst the use of wood and charcoal declined by 43% over the same period.
LPG and the energy transition
Liquid Gas, especially LPG, helps billions move away from polluting solid and liquid fuels.
If, as the International Energy Agency projects, the 800 million to two billion people switching from wood instead used LPG, this would create a net annual atmospheric reduction of 170-415 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. That lower figure is about equal to the annual emissions of Pakistan or the Netherlands; the larger is about that of South Africa or the United Kingdom.
LPG represents a substantial positive impact on several important sustainability factors such as creating jobs and reducing deforestation, GHG emissions and the number of deaths caused each year by indoor pollution.
It has a proven track record in substituting charcoal and biomass for a substantial part of household energy, and could contribute positively towards several of the SDGs, including Access to Energy, Climate Change, Health, and Gender/Equality.
The cost of achieving access to clean fuels by 2030 is estimated to be US$4.5 billion per year. The World Bank estimates that the cost of inaction on clean cooking is in the region of US$2.4 trillion per year, more than 500 times the cost of positive action.
In the industrialised world, LPG is the cooking fuel of choice in rural areas and for outdoor cooking. Gas cooking is efficient, fast and reliable. For recreational applications, LPG can also be transported in convenient, compact cylinders. To further reduce CO2 emissions, traditional LPG can be seamlessly replaced by renewable gases.