Towards clean cooking energy for all in Nigeria: Pathways and impacts

Abstract

Over 175 million Nigerians rely on the use of traditional biomass for cooking, and it is estimated that more than 128,000 people died in Nigeria in 2019 from household air pollution related to these fuels. There is currently a gap in the study of possible pathways to meet Nigeria's goals in clean cooking and in understanding the health and climate impacts that different pathways can bring about. We explore clean cooking access scenarios for Nigeria until 2060 under a business-as-usual scenario, a moderate climate mitigation scenario, and an ambitious transformative scenario. We carry out a disaggregation at the state level for the period up to 2030 to better guide shorter-term policy development. Our analysis shows that under an ambitious scenario where 85 million households achieve access to clean cooking by 2060, annual premature deaths due to exposure to household air pollution would decrease by 7 % compared to 2018 levels. A baseline scenario, on the other hand, sees a dramatic 77 % increase, resulting in 209,000 people dying prematurely, of which 94,000 children under 5. Furthermore, we find that woodfuel removals from forestland would lead to a tripling of carbon dioxide emissions from land use change, reaching 602 Mt CO2 by 2060. Our findings stress the vital importance of a clean cooking transition in Nigeria and underline the urgent need for immediate acceleration in national efforts regarding access to clean cooking for all.

Keywords

• Clean cooking
• Climate change
• Health
• Long-term scenarios
• Net-zero
• Nigeria