A pilot study participant redeeming a voucher for liquefied petroleum gas (Kintampo Health Research Centre).
In 2017, the government of Ghana set a goal of ensuring that 50% of the country’s population has access to liquid petroleum gas—a clean cooking alternative—by the year 2030. In December, Columbia World Projects and the Kintampo Health Research Centre in Ghana kicked off a pilot study to assess what factors would encourage people to actually use that gas in their homes.
Propane and butane—also known as liquefied petroleum gas—offer a clean alternative to traditional materials that are widely used to cook in rural Ghana, such as wood, charcoal and crop residue. When burned in open fires for cooking, those materials pollute the homes they’re used in, leading to harmful health outcomes.
The new study—funded by the National Institutes of Health and Columbia World Projects—completed its pilot phase and is scheduled to launch in full this month. It is evaluating how two variables affect how willing people are to purchase liquefied petroleum gas: The distance people have to travel to get to a location where they can buy it, and the cost of the gas once they get there.
"By looking at these variables, we are going to be able to understand a lot more about the conditions under which people will adopt these safer cooking technologies. It is a vital step to designing effective policies to increase clean fuel use,” Darby Jack, an associate professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and a member of the team that designed the study, said.
The study is part of the Columbia World Project Combating Household Pollution With Clean Energy (CHAP), which aims to promote a transition to clean cooking technologies that reduce household air pollution. In Ghana, about 70% of households cook by burning biomass like wood and charcoal. Despite significant public and private investment in efforts to encourage the use of clean cookstoves over the last decade, new approaches are needed to achieve substantial improvements to air quality and health.
Limited past research has shown that households continue to use traditional cooking methods even when they have access to clean cookstoves—a conundrum for governments, foundations, NGOs and researchers encouraging the adoption of clean cooking technologies. The study interrogates how clean fuel use is affected by cost and convenience. These factors are crucial when considering households’ main alternative: cooking with wood gathered from nearby areas.
Around 1000 people in rural agricultural communities in central Ghana are taking part in the study. Participants will receive vouchers that randomly discount the price of gas, assigning prices that range between a 5% discount off the prevailing market rate to a 100% subsidy, in which the gas is free.
The study comes amid a nationwide restructuring of how liquid petroleum gas is sold in Ghana. Until recently, residents who use liquefied petroleum gas have refilled metal canisters of gas that they keep in their homes themselves at local gas stations. The method has proved dangerous: A 2017 explosion at a gas station in Accra killed 7 and injured more than 130, prompting the government to hasten reforms. The government’s restructuring aims to shift Ghana to a safer recirculation model similar to that found throughout the United States, where residents swap used gas canisters for filled ones at official drop spots.
Columbia World Projects’ Combating Household Air Pollution with Clean Energy (CHAP) project is led by a multidisciplinary team from Ghana and the United States, including Darby Jack of Columbia University; Kelsey Jack, of University of California Santa Barbara; and Kwaku Poku Asante of the Kintampo Health Research Centre in Ghana. The project, and this study’s design, relied heavily on collaboration between the international team, including Columbia post doctoral researcher Georgette Owusu-Amankwah and Kintampo Health Research Centre Research Fellows Rebecca Dwommoh, and Theresa Tawiah.
“We have studied this issue for years, in Ghana and knew that this was the right way to approach our clean household energy question,” Dr. Asante, said, adding: “We are building on a longstanding collaboration that brings in diverse expertise from the various partners and I have no doubt that the study will provide data for decision making in Ghana.”
After its initial pilot at two locations in December, the study is expanding to cover nearly 40 rural communities. Study participants will be assigned one location where they can use their voucher, providing the research team with more data to assess how the distance residents need to travel to get gas affects their uptake.
The data gathered in this study will be a spring board for the rest of the project:
“Our overall goal with this project is to significantly increase the use of clean cooking fuels that displace traditional firewood and reduce household air pollution, ultimately improving people’s health,” Professor Kelsey Jack said. “This study isn’t the whole thing, but it provides vital data that can help get us there.”