Indicator 7.1.2 Proportion of population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technology

Indicator 7.1.2: Proportion of population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technology

Target 7.1: By 2030, ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services

World Health Organization (WHO)

Definition:

Proportion of population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technology is calculated as the number of people using clean fuels and technologies for cooking, heating and lighting divided by total population reporting that any cooking, heating or lighting, expressed as percentage. “Clean” is defined by the emission rate targets and specific fuel recommendations (i.e. against unprocessed coal and kerosene) included in the normative guidance WHO guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion.

Concepts:

Current global data collection focuses on the primary fuel used for cooking, categorized as solid or non-solid fuels, where solid fuels are considered polluting and non-modern, while non-solid fuels are considered clean. This single measure captures a good part of the lack of access to clean cooking fuels but fails to collect data on type of device or technology used for cooking, and fails to capture other polluting forms of energy use in the home such as those used for lighting and heating.

New evidence-based normative guidance from the WHO (i.e. WHO Guidelines for indoor air quality guidelines: household fuel combustion), highlights the importance of addressing both fuel and the technology for adequately protecting public health. These guidelines provide technical recommendations in the form of emissions targets for as to what fuels and technology (stove, lamp, and so on) combinations in the home are clean. These guidelines also recommend against the use of unprocessed coal and discourage the use of kerosene (a non-solid but highly polluting fuel) in the home. They also recommend that all major household energy end uses (e.g. cooking, space heating, lighting) use efficient fuels and technology combinations to ensure health benefits.

For this reason, the technical recommendations in the WHO guidelines, access to modern cooking solution in the home will be defined as “access to clean fuels and technologies” rather than “access to non-solid fuels.” This shift will help ensure that health and other “nexus” benefits are better counted, and thus realized.

Percent (%)

Primary household fuels and technologies, particularly for cooking, is routinely collected at the national levels in most countries using censuses and surveys. Household surveys used include: United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-supported Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS); United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)-supported Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS); WHO-supported World Health Surveys (WHS); and other reliable and nationally representative country surveys.

The World Health Organization is the agency that has taken responsibility for compiling a database of statistics on access to clean and polluting fuels and technologies harvested from the full global body of household surveys for cooking, heating and lighting. Currently, the WHO Database covers cooking energy for 171 countries and one territory for the period 1960-2022 and is updated regularly and publicly available. For lighting, the WHO database includes data for 125 countries for the period 1963-2022. For heating, the WHO database includes data for 80 countries for the period 1977-2022.

Presently WHO is working with national surveying agencies, country statistical offices and other stakeholders (e.g. researchers) to enhance multipurpose household survey instruments to gather data on the fuels and technologies used for heating and lighting.

In 2022, as a result of a survey enhancement process, data collection for the cooking database included main cooking fuel, exhaust systems (chimney or fan), cooking technology and cooking location. Lighting data collection focused on main lighting fuel. Data collection for the heating database included main heating fuel as well as heating technology.

National Statistical Offices or any national providers of household surveys and censuses.

The indicator uses the type of primary fuels and technologies used for cooking, heating, and lighting as a practical surrogate for estimating human exposure to household (indoor) air pollution and its related disease burden, as it is not currently possible to obtain nationally representative samples of indoor concentrations of criteria pollutants, such as fine particulate matter and carbon monoxide. However, epidemiological studies provide a science-based evidence for establishing those estimates using these surrogates.

The indicator is based on the main type of fuel and technology used for cooking as cooking occupies the largest share of overall household energy needs. However, many households use more than one type of fuel and stove for cooking and, depending on climatic and geographical conditions, heating with polluting fuels can also be a contributor to household (indoor) air pollution levels. In addition, lighting with kerosene, a very polluting and hazardous fuel is also often used, and in some countries is the main fuel used for cooking.

While the existing global household survey evidence base provides a good starting point for tracking household energy access for cooking fuel, it also presents limitations that will need to be addressed over time. Currently there is a limited amount of available data capturing the type of fuel and devices used in the home for heating and lighting. Accordingly, WHO in cooperation with World Bank, and the Global Alliance for Clean Cook stoves, led a survey enhancement process with representatives from country statistical offices and national household surveying agencies (e.g. Demographic and Health Survey, Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, Living Standards Measurement Survey) to better gather efficiently and harmoniously information on the fuels and technologies for cooking, heating and lighting. The efforts concluded in the creation of 6 new questions that will replace and slightly expand the current set of questions commonly used on national multipurpose surveys to assess household energy.

Substantial progress has already been made toward developing and piloting a new methodology known as the Multi-Tier Framework for Measuring Energy Access (World Bank) which is able to capture the affordability and reliability of energy access explicitly referenced in the language of SDG7 and harnesses the normative guidance in the WHO guidelines to benchmark tiers of energy access. The methodology for the Multi-Tier Framework for Measuring Energy Access has already been published based on a broad consultative exercise and represents a consensus view across numerous international agencies working in the field. The 2022 estimates provided include data extracted from these surveys.

The indicator is modelled with household survey data compiled by WHO. The information on cooking fuel use and cooking practices comes from more than 1500 nationally representative surveys and censuses. Survey sources include Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS), Multi-Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), the World Health Survey (WHS), and other nationally developed and implemented surveys.

Estimates of primary cooking energy for the total, urban and rural population for a given country and year are obtained together using a single multivariate hierarchical model. Using household survey data as inputs, the model jointly estimates primary reliance on 6 specific fuel types:

1. unprocessed biomass (e.g. wood),
2. charcoal,
3. coal,
4. kerosene,
5. gaseous fuels (e.g. LPG), and
6. electricity; and a final category including other clean fuels (e.g. alcohol).

Estimates of the proportion of the population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technology (SDG indicator 7.1.2) are then derived by aggregating the estimates for primary reliance on clean fuel types from the model. Details on the model are published in Stoner et al. (2020).

Only survey data with less than 15% of the population reporting “missing” and “no cooking” and “other fuels” were included in the analysis. Surveys were also discarded if the sum of all mutually exclusive categories reported was not within 98-102%. Fuel use values were uniformly scaled (divided) by the sum of all mutually exclusive categories excluding “missing”, “no cooking” and “other fuels”.

Countries classified as high-income according to the World Bank country classification (81 countries) in the 2022 fiscal year were assumed to have fully transitioned to clean household energy and therefore are reported as 100% access to clean technologies.

No estimates were reported for low- and middle-income countries without data (Bulgaria, Lebanon and Libya). Modelled specific fuel estimates were derived for 132 low- and middle-income countries and 3 countries with no World Bank income classification (Cook Islands, Niue and Venezuela). Estimates of overall clean fuel use were reported for 190 countries.

Estimates of clean cooking access are updated on an annual basis for the whole time series (e.g. 1990-2022). This means that there may be changes in previous annual estimates due to the inclusion of new data points influencing the overall trend for a given country.

2024-03-28

World Health Organization (WHO)

3.9.1: Mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution

1