ABSTRACT
How can we ensure that low-carbon transitions include universal accessibility? Globally, one third of the world's population cooks without clean fuels and more efficient technologies. With an annual increase in the numbers of unclean cooking fuel users in Africa and the requirement to improve access to clean cooking fuels in sub-Saharan Africa at a rate 15 times quicker than historical rates in the period to 2030, efforts to scale up the utilisation of cleaner technologies have been rigorous in the region. Despite efforts to transition to clean cooking fuels in Ghana, there is still little evidence of a decline in the use of unclean woodfuels for cooking. As rural dwellers are the primary users of woodfuel, this particularly impacts them and represents an inequality in accessing clean alternatives.
This chapter explores the factors that determine the use of cooking fuels and why rural dwellers resort to woodfuels in particular, with a focus on the Ghanaian context. It examines the alternative sources of cooking fuel available and how a transition to clean cooking fuels would affect rural livelihoods. The empirical results were drawn from a qualitative survey that focused on low-carbon transitions at the community scale in rural Ghana. The findings revealed that when selecting the type of cooking fuel to use, rural dwellers prioritise factors such as availability, cost, and culture. As much as a transition to clean cooking fuels is imperative from an emissions reduction point of view, the findings showed that an abrupt transition would negatively impact rural livelihoods, and hence, the process will not be welcomed by rural dwellers. This chapter therefore offers future directions to attain transition objectives in rural sub-Saharan Africa – herein, a gradual introduction of clean cooking fuels in order not to overwhelm users.
