Do Clean Cookstoves Reduce Biomass Fuel Consumption?

Abstract

Despite widespread global efforts to promote clean cookstoves, surprisingly little is known about whether they actually deliver reduced biomass fuel consumption when used in real-world settings. Using cross-sectional household survey data from Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Uttarakhand (UK) in India, we examine the impact of clean cookstoves on three key outcomes related to solid fuel consumption and stove use with OLS regression, propensity score matching, and the Heckman two-step estimator. Results from the Heckman two-step estimator suggest that using a clean cookstove is associated with daily reductions of 3.9 kg of biomass fuel, 83 fewer minutes cooking on traditional stoves, and 0.5 fewer hours collecting biomass fuels. Our results support the idea that efforts to promote clean stoves among poor rural households in India can lead to reductions in solid fuel use and time spent cooking on traditional stoves, and that any rebound effect towards greater amounts of cooking on multiple stoves, is not sufficient to eliminate these gains.