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Impact of time expenditure on household preferences for cooking fuels

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  • Das, Karabee
  • Hiloidhari, Moonmoon
  • Baruah, D.C.
  • Nonhebel, Sanderine

Abstract

Access to energy for cooking is one of the major challenges that rural India faces. Most of the rural households of North-Eastern India rely heavily upon fuelwood and traditional open-fire cookstoves for cooking activities. And everyday collection of fuelwood is time-consuming. Hence, women often gather fuelwood to make charcoal. While the use of charcoal has some advantages, it is not clear whether the investment of time in making charcoal is worthwhile. In this paper, we compare household time investments for fuelwood and charcoal production. The study is done using survey data on Napaam village situated in Sonitpur District of Assam, Northeast India. We developed a model to analyse fuelwood needed and time spent upon the introduction of improved cookstoves and/or charcoal production. This analysis reveals that improved cookstoves using fuelwood results in the least time expenditure on the production of cooking fuel. Whilst introducing charcoal marginally reduces the amount of fuelwood, but increases time spent on cooking, due to the time required to produce the charcoal. Hence, rural households who make their own charcoal spend more time on producing cooking fuel than those households relying on direct use of fuelwood.

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  • Das, Karabee & Hiloidhari, Moonmoon & Baruah, D.C. & Nonhebel, Sanderine, 2018. "Impact of time expenditure on household preferences for cooking fuels," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 309-316.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:151:y:2018:i:c:p:309-316
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2018.03.048
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    Cited by:

    1. Yohannes Biru Aemro & Pedro Moura & Aníbal T. Almeida, 2021. "Inefficient cooking systems a challenge for sustainable development: a case of rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(10), pages 14697-14721, October.
    2. Paweł Stępień & Kacper Świechowski & Martyna Hnat & Szymon Kugler & Sylwia Stegenta-Dąbrowska & Jacek A. Koziel & Piotr Manczarski & Andrzej Białowiec, 2019. "Waste to Carbon: Biocoal from Elephant Dung as New Cooking Fuel," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-32, November.
    3. Das, Karabee & Nonhebel, Sanderine, 2019. "A comparative study of the land required for food and cooking fuel in rural India," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).

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