When Columbia researcher and professor Darby Jack first met Kwaku Poku (“KP”) Asante, director of the Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC) in Ghana, “We quickly became friends,” Darby says. “There was a real sense of friendship and common purpose—one rooted in science, and thinking analytically and quantitatively about the world.”
The pair first met in 2007, when Darby, a trained economist, was a postdoc at Columbia’s Earth Institute studying environmental health risks in developing regions, and KP—a physician with a masters in public health from the University of Ghana—was serving as a research fellow and pursuing his PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “We were very hungry to do something noble,” KP recalls. “Over the last 15 years or so, we’ve been able to do that.”
(Pictured from left to right: Ernest Osei-Wusu (Rancard), Erin Harned (Columbia University), Bernard Aryee (Rancard), Daniel Dzani (Zeepay), Godwin Hottor (Zeepay), Nicola Punzi (Zeepay), Kelsey Jack (University of California - Santa Barbara), Maame Equia Asiamah (Zeepay), Naa Croffie (Rancard), Darby Jack (Columbia University), Heather Lahr (University of California - Santa Barbara), Sulemana Abubakari (Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC)), Ali Abeka (Ministry of Energy (MoE))
That hunger, so to speak, brought them to the Ghanaian kitchen where in 2007, roughly 80% of cooking is done by burning biomass fuels, including wood and charcoal. Curious about the implications of the resulting exposure to harmful air pollutants, they conducted several studies, starting in 2007, on the public health risks of these cooking practices, and then considered the potential tradeoffs surrounding cleaner alternatives—most notably, liquefied petroleum gas, or LPG, which emits a third of the carbon emissions as charcoal.
From KP’s perspective, Darby’s unique approach has proved invaluable. “In one of our studies, we quickly realized that if we stopped delivering LPG free of charge, people wouldn’t use it,” KP recounts. “For me, use was equal to affordability. But Darby pointed out that accessibility to the LPG, or several other factors, might also be the issue.”
Solving the Puzzle: Why Weren’t Ghanaians Buying the Cleaner Fuel?
The government of Ghana hopes to transition 50% of the population to LPG by 2030. To help meet this goal and to better understand how transitioning communities to cleaner fuel impact overall air pollution and subsequently health, the two submitted a proposal to Columbia World Projects called, Combating Household Air Pollution with Clean Energy (CHAP) and was awarded 5 years of funding
After conducting a nationally represented household energy use survey in 2021, they found most urban charcoal users purchased small batches of charcoal every day or two to fuel the cookstoves in their homes. That means even if total spending is the same between charcoal and LPG, the flow of that spending can make it difficult for households to switch. In 2022 the team also conducted a field experiment to determine overall willingness to pay for LPG and willingness to travel to get LPG, finding that a 10 km increase in distance to a cylinder exchange point decreases the probability of adoption by 2%.
Working together to design a viable solution
In 2011, Darby, KP, and colleagues enrolled 1,400 pregnant women and have been following their children in an ongoing study meant to demonstrate the long-term differences in health and child development from cooking with LPG over biomass fuels. Their findings showed that after four years, mothers and children were healthier in households that had switched to cooking with LPG than those in the control arm who were cooking with biomass fuel.
If you ask Darby, their fruitful efforts can largely be attributed to his long-time partner’s knack for building and maintaining relationships. “KP has a lot of knowledge about how to interact with other partners in Ghana,” he says. “He has really set a high bar in terms of quality, and how people should interact with one another around research.”
Acutely aware of the historical power of relationships in successful research and implementation initiatives—and the importance of creating a well-balanced partnership—CWP encouraged the duo to recruit a third project lead and offered a shortlist of potential candidates suggested by outside advisors. One name that stood out: Kelsey Jack, an economist and associate professor at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)—who, funnily enough, happened to be Darby’s sister.
“With most new collaborators it takes months, or even years, to really work together well. With Darby, it happened very quickly,” Kelsey says.
Darby agrees. “She has brought different ways of thinking,” he asserts, “and her approach and expertise have been instrumental to our success.” Kelsey feels that their approach is complementary: “Darby is a big thinker, while I sometimes get lost in the details,” she says.
Kelsey—who specializes in environmental and developmental economics—focused on understanding 1) why households chose one fuel over another; and 2) what would induce them to choose one that was less polluting. That called for carrying out two interventional behavioral assessments—one in a rural area, the other in the urban city of Techiman—that allowed the team to better understand the current choices and constraints Ghanaians face when selecting which fuel to use for household cooking.
Overall, their findings highlighted that convenience matters but price and spending patterns more so. “If it is difficult to access cleaner fuel, households will not use it—but price and spending patterns are more important,” she notes.
Consequently, the CWP team has begun developing a new technology platform connecting LPG consumers with suppliers and offering a phone-based savings tool that can help households put aside funds for their LPG purchases. The innovative offering is currently being tested in Ghana, and a larger pilot is planned for this summer.
The ultimate goal of the project—which would not be possible without the help of several members of the Columbia University and UCSB community, including students, postdocs and project coordinators and dedicated staff at KHRC—most notably, Dr. Sulemana Abubakari, the Centre’s Deputy Chief Health Research Officer—is to significantly reduce morbidity and mortality related to cooking related pollution.
“The downside is LPG is a fossil fuel, so burning it still entails carbon dioxide emissions,” Darby admits. “But it’s the solution that makes the most sense, given the current infrastructure in Ghana.”
LPG is a transition fuel that can help diminish the health and ecosystem consequences of using biomass. The ideal approach, he says, would be to draw electricity for cooking from renewable sources, such as solar power. But for now, that aspiration is out of reach, given the multibillion-dollar societal-scale investments in generation capacity and distribution grids needed to realize it.
Reinforcing Bonds Beyond the Workplace
The well-oiled group—which plans to scale its efforts—has been able to form strategic partnerships with numerous organizations, including the UN and World Bank in Ghana. “They are very excited to collaborate with us because we have a variety of experts, from health economists to pulmonologists,” KP enthuses.
Brought together by a joint mission, a shared sense of humor, and a natural camaraderie, the tight-knit trio continually make an effort to strengthen their ties outside of the office, taking turns flying across the Atlantic to not only work, but also visit and dine with each other’s families. “We’ve had a multidimensional relationship, as opposed to something that’s just focused on work,” says Darby.
Not to say they don’t encounter the occasional bump on the road. “In a partnership, it’s inevitable that there will be points when you have different interests or would prefer things go a different way. But because we have a common vision, we’ve been able to move past those without too much difficulty,” he reasons.
“Applications, capacity building, and leadership—those are the things that academics always fight about. They are hard discussions,” KP confesses. “But we always walk out with a good solution.”
The team's research is highlighted in Volume 9 Issue 4 of nature energy (April 2024).
The team has published four papers on the CWP project work and findings and is working on several more.
Kar, A., Tawiah, T., Graham, L., Owusu-Amankwah, G., Daouda, M., Malagutti, F., Chillrud, S., Harned, E. E., Iddrisu, S., Apraku, E. A., Tetteh, R., Awuni, S., Jack, K., Abubakari, S. W., Jack, D., & Asante, K. P. (2024). Factors associated with the use of liquefied petroleum gas in Ghana vary at different stages of transition. Nature Energy. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01462-5
Owusu-Amankwah, G., Abubakari, S., Apraku, E.A., Iddrisu, S., Kar, A., Malagutti,F., Daouda, M.,Tawiah,T., Awuni,S., Nuhu,A.R.,Peprah, P., Jack, B..K, Asante, K.P., Jack, D. (2023, Oct.). Socioeconomic determinants of household stove use and stove stacking patterns in Ghana, Energy for Sustainable Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2023.101256
Lahr, H., Jack, K., Jack, D., Malagutti, F., Graham,L., Tsinigo, E., Tawiah, E. (2023, May 15). Connecting the Dots With Mobile Money: How Digital Finance Can Foster a Clean Energy Transition in Ghana. Brac Institute of Development and Governance. https://bigd.bracu.ac.bd/connecting-the-dots-with-mobile-money-how-digital-finance-can-foster-a-clean-energy-transition-in-ghana/