The benefits of action to reduce household air pollution (BAR-HAP) model: A new decision support tool

Abstract

Cooking with polluting and inefficient fuels and technologies is responsible for a large set of global harms, ranging from health and time losses among the billions of people who are energy poor, to environmental degradation at a regional and global scale. This paper presents a new decision-support model–the BAR-HAP Tool–that is aimed at guiding planning of policy interventions to accelerate transitions towards cleaner cooking fuels and technologies. The conceptual model behind BAR-HAP lies in a framework of costs and benefits that is holistic and comprehensive, allows consideration of multiple policy interventions (subsidies, financing, bans, and behavior change communication), and realistically accounts for partial adoption and use of improved cooking technology. It incorporates evidence from recent efforts to characterize the relevant set of parameters that determine those costs and benefits, including those related to intervention effectiveness. Practical aspects of the tool were modified based on feedback from a pilot testing workshop with multisectoral users in Nepal. To demonstrate the functionality of the BAR-HAP tool, we present illustrative calculations related to several cooking transitions in the context of Nepal. In accounting for the multifaceted nature of the issue of household air pollution, the BAR-HAP model is expected to facilitate cross-sector dialogue and problem-solving to address this major health, environment and development challenge.

A geospatial approach to understanding clean cooking challenges in sub-Saharan Africa

“…This concentration is then multiplied by an exposure adjustment factor (ɛ, 0.51 for traditional biomass and 0.71 for all other stoves), included to account for potential behavioural change that results from switching to a cleaner stove. This is in line with what is done in the BAR-HAP model 32 .…”

“…The divergence between the private and social benefits of clean cooking, globally and in SSA, has been identified in previous studies as a major policy challenge that requires concerted policy actions to address 5,6,12,31 . Previous work has also highlighted the substantial heterogeneity in outcomes that arises from different assumptions, based on empirical data, about the values of parameters that influence the costs and benefits of cooking technologies 32 . However, neither the spatial patterns of this divergence nor the implications for targeted policies and interventions have previously been characterized.…”

“…For traditional stoves, we assume no O&M. For all other stoves, we assume an O&M of US$3.7 yr −1 (ref. 32). Future O&M costs are discounted to present values using the relevant discount rate.…”

Biomass fuel use and birth weight among term births in Nigeria

“…Actionable strategies for reducing the presence of indoor pollutants and personal exposures could be developed by combining scientific knowledge about the effectiveness of existing interventions and a social-ecological systems framework: synthesis of existing interventions and literature to elucidate relationships among spatially and otherwise diverse indoor air quality factors [47]. Specific policy instruments intended to reduce population-level exposure to indoor air pollution from burning biomass fuel include stove subsidy, fuel subsidy, fuel bans, and behavior change communication [48]. Finally, it is vital to adopt the lessons from similar household health interventions, such as sanitation and nutrition, in implementing changes in the energy ecosystems to support the scaling of clean fuels.…”

A systematic bibliometric review of clean energy transition: Implications for low-carbon development

“…Given that household energy use for heating and cooking is an essential part of energy use, recent studies have made substantial progress on enhancing the heating system's energy efficiency and advancing the clean energy transition for cooking [17,[105][106][107][108]. Moreover, in terms of the driving factors on the household clean energy transition, more recent literature indicates that household income and energy prices are found to have significant effects on household energy use decisions.…”