Adoption and impacts of improved biomass cookstoves in rural Rajasthan ☆ Marc A. Jeuland a,b, ⁎, Subhrendu K. Pattanayak c , Sushmita Samaddar d , Ronak Shah e , Mansi Vora f a Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America b RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, Essen, Germany c Sanford School of Public Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America d The World Bank, Washington, DC, United States of America e Seva Mandir, Udaipur, India f Independent Consultant, Jaipur, India abstract article info Article history: Received 9 November 2019 Revised 29 March 2020 Accepted 16 June 2020 Available online xxxx Keywords: Household air pollution Improved cookstoves Biomass Traditional cookstoves Rural India Biomass-burning improved cookstoves (ICS) are often seen as a promising intermediate technology solution along the path of household transition to cleaner cooking. This study reports on the results of an experimental evaluation of a carbon finance-enabled program conducted in rural villages in Rajasthan, India. Half (or 20) of 40 purposively-selected treatment villages were randomly assigned to an ‘early’ intervention group that was of- fered a package of two biomass fuel ICS one year prior to the other half (the ‘late’ group). Analysis of data col- lected prior to the second phase of the intervention shows that adoption of ICS reached nearly 46% in the group exposed to the intervention, and that households largely held positive short-term views of the effects of these technologies. Moreover, we found evidence of both time savings and reductions in fuel use among inter- vention households. Consistent with the wider literature on the limitations of biomass-burning ICS, however, we failed to detect consistent effects on self-reported respiratory health. Findings were generally consistent across simple and difference-in-difference estimates of impacts, and suggest that biomass-burning ICS can de- liver benefits even when they offer few improvements in health. © 2020 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction Over a third of the world's population (2.8 billion people), of which 95% is in developing low and middle-income countries, relies on solid fuels like wood, dung, agricultural residue and coal, to meet most energy needs (IEA, 2017). Collection of these solid fuels from the environment entails significant costs in terms of lost productivity and environmental degradation, particularly in fuel scarce regions (Jeuland & Pattanayak, 2012; Bailis, Drigo, Ghilardi, & Masera, 2015). Inefficient traditional cooking methods have been shown to reduce the time available for ed- ucation, agriculture and productive activities, particularly among women and children (Pitt, Rosenzweig, & Hassan, 2005; Dinkelman, 2011; Poddar & Chakrabarti, 2016). In addition, such fuels emit un- healthy emissions when burned, that include fine particulate matter (PM2.5), carbon monoxide, and a variety of dangerous polyaromatic hy- drocarbons (Rosenthal, 2015), and create a variety of major health risks (Ezzati & Kammen, 2002; Smith et al., 2013). Many of these pollutants harm the global climate (Ramanathan & Carmichael, 2008; Anenberg et al., 2012). To address the various harms associated with traditional cooking, there is increasing momentum to promote and disseminate improved cookstoves (ICS). The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), for example, has aimed to achieve ICS adoption by 100 million homes by 2020 (GACC, 2015). Global promotional strategies have included funding through small-scale credit operations, carbon credits programs like the Gold Standard and Clean Development Mechanism (Simon, Bumpus, & Mann, 2012; Lambe, Jürisoo, Lee, & Johnson, 2015), and na- tional level initiatives like the National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative in India (Venkataraman, Sagar, Habib, Lam, & Smith, 2010), itself no longer operational. Implementation challenges continue to be a problem for many ICS promotion efforts, however (Rosenthal et al., 2017). Several highly controlled researcher-driven studies have begun to shed light on ways to overcome key dissemination challenges (Beltramo, Blalock, Energy for Sustainable Development 57 (2020) 149–159 ☆ We thank the joint research program between Duke University and the Indian Institute of Management in Udaipur, which provided financial support for this study. Seva Mandir and Chitra provided support with field data collection. We also thank seminar participants at Duke University, the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative and Environment for Development Annual Meetings, and the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economics for their valuable comments on prior versions of the paper. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: marc.jeuland@duke.edu (M.A. Jeuland), subhrendu.pattanayak@duke.edu (S.K. Pattanayak), ssamaddar@worldbank.org (S. Samaddar), ronak.shah@sevamandir.org (R. Shah). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2020.06.005 0973-0826/© 2020 International Energy Initiative. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy for Sustainable Development