Improved Cookstoves and User Preferences of Rural Women in Ondo State, Nigeria: Estimates from Random Utility Maximization Model

Abstract

Energy is one of the most important items for human survival apart from air, water and food. It is required for cooking, lighting, heating, boiling and other various domestic needs. Rural population largely depend on the traditional sources of energy in meeting their domestic energy demands while urban population depend essentially on charcoal and fossil fuels. However, high level of poverty and other socioeconomic problems constrains both rural and urban population from access to adequate, reliable and clean energy sources for domestic purposes (Momodu, 2013). Of all domestic fuels in Nigeria, fuelwood remains the commonest partly due to its accessibility, affordability, convenience, tradition and vegetative distribution as other sources namely domestic gas, wind energy, kerosene, solar energy and electricity are either uncommon, modern, costly, sophisticated or required high levels of education and technology to explore, exploit, refine, distribute, store, utilized and maintained (Akut, 2008). Demand for traditional fuel therefore places significant pressure on local forests and woodlands, contributing to deforestation, soil erosion and desertification. Oftentimes, the need for wood is so great that reforestation attempts of badly degraded regions prove impossible because even young trees are rapidly been harvested for cooking fuelwood or charcoal production. In the most severely affected regions, the poorest fuel sources, animal manures, grasses, crop residues, roots and shrubs are also harvested (FAO, 2013). In the developing countries, nearly 3 billion people rely on traditional cooking methods such as an open fire or basic cookstoves, using solid fuels such as wood, charcoal, crop residues and animal dung (GACC, 2011). An energy access assessment across many developing countries reveals that 600 million of this population live in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where access to modern fuels is as low as 17%, while 69% of the population rely on wood as their primary cooking fuel (UNDP/WHO, 2009). In the efforts by the industrialized economies to mitigate climate change, efforts are being made at reducing Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 50% or more by 2050. Since CO2 is the most significant and prevalent greenhouse gas