Shifting from solid fuel to modern energy requires affordability and availability

Bringing up her five children alone, according to Esi Araba pushes her to cope and manage with the naked fire and the heat that emanates from the direct solid fuel, despite the attendant health hazards.

Araba, within her 30s says she has engaged in the roasted yams and ripped plantain business for years as the only source of income to fend for her upkeep and that of her children.

She relies on charcoal, a biomass, to roast the stuff on a traditionally made stove that exposes her body parts to direct heat and sunlight.

As they wait from a distance to be served their lunch, she uses her bare hands to turn to ensure that the yams and ripped plantain are properly baked to meet the demands of the customers.

The plights of Araba, and other women engaged in the petty business and exposed to direct heat and sunlight makes affordability and availability an important issue when discussing access to modern energy systems in Ghana.

Traditional use of open fires and poorly functioning woodstoves produce lots of gaseous pollutants and particles, which is injurious to the health of women and children who are mostly responsible for food preparation in rural areas.

Solid Fuel

Half the world’s population rely on solid fuels such as biomass (wood, charcoal, agricultural residues, and animal dung) and coal for household energy, burning them in inefficient open fires and stoves with inadequate ventilation.

Implications

Health experts say household solid fuel combustion is associated with four million premature deaths annually.

Besides, that contributes to forest degradation, loss of habitat and biodiversity, and climate change; and hinders social and economic progress as women and children spend hours collecting fuel.

In fact, household adoption of cleaner and more efficient stoves and fuels offers considerable hopes to save lives, improve forest sustainability, slow climate change, and empower women around the world.

The simple act of cooking a meal has dire consequences for health and the environment, as more people in rural Ghana rely on solid fuels like wood, and charcoal, a primary source of household energy.

These solid fuels are often burned in inefficient open fires and rudimentary stoves with inadequate ventilation, exposing families, in particular women and children, to toxic indoor smoke.

Household solid fuel combustion is associated with 3.5 million and 0.5 million premature deaths annually due to indoor and outdoor air pollution exposure, respectively.

This burden occurs mainly in developing countries like Ghana and now appears to exceed the burdens of malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV combined.

Millions more suffer from disabilities related to cardiovascular problems, chronic and acute respiratory conditions, and cataracts.

Inefficient burning of solid fuels for energy contributes to climate change, and when woodfuel is unsustainably harvested, deforestation, forest degradation, and loss of habitat and biodiversity can result.

Traditional use of open fires and poorly functioning woodstoves produce lots of gaseous pollutants and particles, which is injurious to the health of women and children who are mostly responsible for food preparation in rural areas.

Statistics

Fuel wood and charcoal meet approximately 75 percent of Ghana’s fuel requirements and approximately 69 per cent of all urban households in Ghana use charcoal, but the annual per capita consumption is about 180 kg, while the total annual consumption is about 700,000 tons.

Health Dangers

Medicine has established that air pollution from cooking with solid fuel is a key risk factor in childhood acute lower respiratory infections – pneumonia, as well as in many other respiratory, cardiovascular and ocular diseases.

According to Dr Philip Anokye, the Clinical Coordinator at the Chiraa Government Hospital in the Sunyani West Municipality of the Bono Region, exposing the body to direct heat and sunlight had some long-term health hazards.

He said though those who exposed their body system to naked fire and the heat wouldn’t experience the hazards now, it would have dire consequences on their health as they grew.

Dr Anokye urged the women engaged in those petty businesses to opt for other alternatives and modern energy systems, rather than continuously exposing themselves to the naked fires, heat and sunlight.

Polluting cooking process

Inefficient and polluting cooking processes are deeply entrenched in the Ghanaian culture, consequently exposure to indoor air pollution in Ghana is responsible for the annual loss of 502,000 disability adjusted life-years (DALY).

The DALY is a standard metric used by the World Health Organization (WHO) to indicate the burden of death and illness due to specific risk factors.

Use of fuel wood especially in enclosed kitchens create health risks such as lung cancer, stroke, cataract and burns.

In fact, women and children used for fuel wood collection often suffer from drudgery and are exposed to attacks of dangerous animals such as scorpions and snakes.

Methods

Traditionally, Ghanaians cook with high fire power with cooking pots usually round-bottom by design to allow for easy driving of most indigenous foods.

Rural households in Ghana generally adopt similar cooking styles and habits. However, the type of woodstoves used vary from one geographical location to the other and are made with different materials including; stones, concrete blocks, clay and metals that come in different designs.

The ancient traditional woodstove in Ghana has three-stone stoves of clay or mud stove or tyre rim stove.

Sources/climate impacts

Fuel wood is gathered from many sources, notably, virgin and degraded forests, savannah (shrub lands) or mangroves, wood fuel/forest plantations, farmlands, pasturelands, offcuts of processed timber and roadsides.

Though sustainable sources of wood fuel are legally obtained from plantations, farms, homesteads and other planted sources, over-exploitation of fuel wood by local communities leads to degradation of natural vegetation resulting in deforestation.

A report from the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources estimates over 90 percent of fuel or firewood comes from the natural forest and farmlands.

The remaining is obtained from logging residues, sawmills and plantations or woodlots and the unsustainable production of wood fuel especially in the fragile ecological areas of the Savanna regions is also listed among the driving forces of deforestation and forest degradation in the country in the last three decades.

Call for Action

Though Ghana has developed several national policies and plans related to fuel wood, there are still no legally-binding arrangements to enforce provisions on production, supply and marketing of solid fuel.

The demand for wood puts Ghana’s forests under tremendous pressure and has severe consequences for the ecosystem as a whole.

It is imperative for the nation to break the trend and move particularly the rural large populations away from the practices, resulting in unacceptably high gas emissions and indoor air pollution which damages health.

There is also the need to provide a means to increase availability and affordability of modern energy systems by lowering retail prices and introducing quality guarantees as well.

Convincingly, fuel saving, less smoking stove, durability, affordability, versatility, portability and speed of use must be factors to consider for improved wood stoves.

To be able to develop a sustainable market for access to, and promote improved energy systems successfully in the country, end users ought to understand the effects of using firewood on their health and socio-economic development.

By Dennis Peprah