Clean household energy policy and programme planning guide

Exposure to household air pollution (HAP) is one of the greatest environmental risks to human health worldwide. Policies to accelerate the adoption of clean cooking, heating and lighting are essential for reducing HAP and the enormous burden of disease it causes and for lowering climate-warming emissions and achieving other urgent societal priorities.

The goal of this guide is to support policy-makers and implementing partners in the health, energy, environment and related sectors in bringing about a rapid transition to widescale use of clean household energy. Decision-makers who recognize this imperative confront a number of important questions. Which fuels and devices are clean for health at the point of use? Which are transitional, that help to achieve incremental but valuable health gains and are between polluting and truly clean? What policies can promote sustained use of clean household energy? How can clean household energy solutions be tailored to each country’s needs? What factors should be considered in determining which policies, fuels and devices are best for a particular context?

This guide will help to answer those and other questions. It provides practical guidance on identifying, assessing, comparing and choosing policies and programmes to help households move from using polluting fuels and devices towards sustained adoption of clean energy sources and technologies at the point of use, such as electricity, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), ethanol, biogas and certain advanced combustion biomass stoves.