Household energy use and health in low-income and middle-income countries

Summary

At the household level, energy powers human health and wellbeing, enabling essential services such as cooking, lighting, communications, heating, cooling, and ventilation. Despite the recognised need for reliable clean energy, access remains deeply unequal, with high-income households benefiting from modern energy sources while over 600 million people do not have access to electricity and 2-3 billion people rely on biomass fuels as an energy source to meet basic household needs. 2-3 million deaths annually are attributed to household air pollution (HAP) from the combustion of these fuels. HAP degrades ambient air quality and contributes to climate change. Studies of household energy and HAP largely focus on cooking-related emissions and might underestimate the true effect of energy use at