Household collection and use of biomass energy sources in South Asia Bhagirath Behera a , Dil Bahadur Rahut b, * , Aryal Jeetendra c , Akhter Ali d a Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, West Bengal, India b Socioeconomics Program, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT),10Km. 45, Carretera Mex-Veracruz, El Batan, Mexico c Socioeconomics Program, CIMMYT, New Delhi, India d Socioeconomics Program, CIMMYT, Islamabad, Pakistan article info Article history: Received 10 January 2015 Received in revised form 23 February 2015 Accepted 23 March 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Biomass Energy Education Gender Wealth South Asia abstract Lack of access to clean, affordable and adequate energy and large scale use of solid fuels such as firewood and cow dung cake is one of the reasons for a lower quality of life in developing countries. It is observed that majority of households in the world that uses solid fuels are located in south Asian countries. The objective of this paper is to examine the pattern of household energy uses, and identify and analyze the factors influencing household choices of energy, sources of fuelwood collection, and family members involved in fuelwood collection. The paper uses primary data collected from three Asian countries: India, Bangladesh and Nepal. A multivariate model is employed to analyze the data. Age, gender and education levels of a household head influence a household's choice of energy sources. Wealthy households are found to use clean energy sources such as liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and electricity, whereas poorer households tend to use solid fuels such as fuelwood and dung cake. Sources of fuelwood collection are largely influenced by a family's labor supply, education, and household wealth status. Females and children are employed by households for fuelwood collection. Nepal and Bangladesh engage mostly female members for fuelwood collection. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Access to clean, affordable and adequate energy is essential to attain a good quality of life and sustainable economic and social development. This has been a major global issue in discussions about sustainable economic development and environment for the last several decades [1e5]. Studies reveal that globally about 2.7 billion people still rely on traditional biomass as their main source of energy for cooking and heating, and 1.3 billion people do not have access to electricity [1,4,6]. The majority of these people live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia [7]. In the sub-Saharan African countries, biomass accounts for nearly three-quarters of the total energy consumption [1]. Even in urban areas where alternative energy sources are presumed to be available, many people continue to use solid fuels such as fuelwood at least for cooking food [8]. A study of the Wolong region of China reveals that a consid- erable majority of households is still dependent on fuelwood despite their access to electricity [3]. One of the main reasons for this lack of inter-fuel substitution is that household choice, and the use of a given source of fuel, hinges on a host of socioeconomic (e.g. income, and wealth), demographic (e.g. family size, house- hold composition, lifestyle, and culture) and location attributes (e.g. proximity to sources of modern and traditional fuels) in addition to fuelwood availability [1,8e11]. However, it should be pointed out that the increasing use of solid fuels and the absence of efficient energy options limits the development scope of households in developing countries significantly [12] and has implications for the local and global environment, as well as the health of those who prepare meals subjected to indoor air pollu- tion [13e16]. Collection and use of biomass is largely influenced by socio- economic and demographic factors of households [17]. Fuelwood from the forest and the village commons is available almost free of financial cost [18] as the society as a whole has traditionally not placed a monetary value on the benefits derived from these envi- ronmental resources since they are not marketable [3]. However, there exists a two-way relationship between fuelwood collection and deforestation [18,19]. Demand for fuelwood from village commons is the prime cause of forest degradation. Fuelwood scarcity is the result of the perpetuation of forest degradation as it is * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ52 595 9521900, þ52 5959517327 (mobile); fax: þ52 58047558. E-mail addresses: bhagirath9@gmail.com (B. Behera), dilbhutan@gmail.com (D.B. Rahut), j.aryal@cgiar.org (A. Jeetendra), akhter.ali@cgiar.org (A. Ali). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.03.059 0360-5442/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Energy xxx (2015) 1e13 Please cite this article in press as: Behera B, et al., Household collection and use of biomass energy sources in South Asia, Energy (2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2015.03.059