ABSTRACT
Sri Lanka is a tropical island off the southern tip of India, with a surface area of about 25,000 square miles, a population of 14.9 million, and an annual per capita gross national product of $US 240 in 1980. Sri Lanka's forests, a major renewable energy resource, have declined from 7.4 million acres in 1955, to about 4 million acres in 1980, due mainly to conversion to agricultural use. The chapter provides an illustration of the approach applied to the case of cooking fuels in urban areas of Sri Lanka, the capital city of Colombo in particular. LPG, which is essentially disregarded in energy policy discussion in Sri Lanka because of its limited availability, may have an important role to play in easing the fuels problem in urban areas. Its marginal efficiency costs are probably lower in cooking than those of competing fuels wood and kerosene.
