Approximately 3 billion people around the world rely on traditional fuels such as charcoal and kerosene for cooking, resulting in millions of premature deaths each year, as well as significant deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Cleaner fuels such as liquid petroleum gas (LPG) could reduce the time needed to cook, benefit human health and the environment. However, dependence on traditional fuels remains high in Ghana, particularly in rural areas and among low income Ghanaians. The project aims to assist with a widespread transition of consumers using charcoal and moving them to the cleaner burning and more environmentally friendly fuel, LPG. From our previous work we have learned that one of the biggest constraints to this fuel transition is asset liquidity. Today, most customers bear the costs of an LPG cylinder refill in one large payment, rather than across multiple smaller payments made as fuel is needed (as is the case for charcoal). Although LPG may even be cheaper in the long run, this large upfront cost and the distance customers must travel to a refill site act as barriers to adoption and sustained use.

The project will focus on a region within Ghana with nearly 30,000 people — with the hope of dramatically and measurably improving their public health, while also contributing to women’s empowerment in the region, economic development and improved environmental quality. If successful, this effort should provide lessons that can be applied throughout Ghana and Africa, more generally. The award to UCSB will support the fourth year of continuing work on the Combating Household Air Pollution (CHAP) project in three key areas, 1) field work associated with the final behavioral assessment in Phase I, stage 2 of the subsidy targeting study in Techiman (scheduled to concluded Oct. 2023), 2) analysis of key learnings from Phase I (assessment phase) of the project including continued analysis and publication of findings of household survey data, demand study and targeting study, and 3) developing and implementing Phase II (implementation phase) which involves developing a mobile application with Ghanaian financial technology (fin tech) partners Rancard & Zeepay and establishing partnerships with LPG marketing companies to pilot GasPay, a phone based application for linking households with LPG suppliers. GasPay is being designed to reduce transaction costs, as well as provide complementary financial tools to encourage savings and provide credit to ensure continuity in clean fuel supply. This work will be done in close collaboration with the project teams in New York and Ghana.