Household clean cooking in Nepal: Policies, practice and prospects

Bikram Acharya, Dipendra Prasad Pant and Mukunda Raj Kattel

Energy Policy, 2025, vol. 206, issue C

Abstract: This study investigates energy-policy shifts and factors influencing households' transition to clean energy, focusing on cooking fuel practices during periods of abundant electricity supply and crises such as pandemics and blockades in Nepal. The rationale stems from the gap between increased clean fuel availability and low adoption rates, alongside concerns over heavy reliance on imported fuels impacting energy security. Using Nepal's Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) 2016 and 2022 datasets, with the Wealth Index as an economic status indicator, the study employs a multinomial probit model to analyze cooking fuel choices by taking household attributes like family structure, income, ICT familiarity, and regional factors into account. The findings of the study show that despite energy sector changes and government initiatives, the adoption of clean cooking energy remained minimal, as determinants like family size, education, and economic status were ineffective. Furthermore, subsidy-based electricity tariffs failed to attract households to clean energy for cooking purposes, highlighting the need for more effective policy measures.

Keywords: Household cooking fuel choice; Policy effectiveness; Energy transition; Nepal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421525002654
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:206:y:2025:i:c:s0301421525002654

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2025.114758

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().