Abstract
Reducing Emission of CO 2 from Africa’s Tropical Forests: A Randomized Controlled Trial Yonas Alem and Remidius D. Ruhinduka Abstract This paper evaluates the impact of distributing high-cost LPG stoves to urban households through subsidy and on credit in a randomized controlled trial setup on charcoal consumption, CO 2 emission, and cooking time. The paper finds that the treatment group (credit and subsidy combined) reduced charcoal consumption by 28.7 per- cent 15 months after the intervention, corresponding to an average aversion of 3.78 MT of CO 2 /household/year. The two treatments are not statistically significantly different. However, a social cost-benefit analysis suggests that the benefit of the stoves is 30-fold larger than their cost under credit and 18-fold larger under subsidy, which indicates that credit is the most socially effective instrument for supporting LPG interventions. The pa- per also documents that LPG stoves reduced cooking time by 68.5 percent 15 months after the interventions. The findings suggest that access to micro-finance is a promising avenue for promoting energy transition and addressing the adverse effects of biomass fuel use in developing countries.
