Applied Energy 98 (2012) 301306

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Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Analysis of the life-cycle costs and environmental impacts of cooking fuels

used in Ghana
George Afrane a,, Augustine Ntiamoah b
a
b

University of Ghana, Department of Food Process Engineering, Legon, Accra, Ghana

Koforidua Polytechnic, Department of Energy Systems Engineering, Koforidua, Ghana

h i g h l i g h t s
" Environmental impact assessment and costing of six cooking fuels were undertaken.
" Using traditional methods, rewood was found to be the cheapest but most polluting.
" A Swedish approach to emissions monetization was used to handle the cooking stage.
" Emission from rewood was found to be the highest; some fuels need more processing.
" The relative ranking of various pollutants was maintained after monetization.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 24 November 2011
Received in revised form 19 March 2012
Accepted 20 March 2012
Available online 21 May 2012
Keywords:
Life-cycle assessment
Life-cycle costing
Cookstoves
Woodfuels
Emissions costing

a b s t r a c t
This study evaluated the life-cycle costs and environmental impacts of fuels used in Ghanaian households
for cooking. The analysis covered all the common cooking energy sources, namely, rewood, charcoal,
kerosene, liqueed petroleum gas, electricity and even biogas, whose use is not as widespread as the others. In addition to the usual costing methods, the Environmental Product Strategies approach (EPS) of
Steen and co-workers, which is based on the concept of willingness-to-pay for the restoration of
degraded systems, is used to monetise the emissions from the cookstoves. The results indicate that rewood, one of the popular woodfuels in Ghana and other developing countries, with an annual environmental damage cost of US$36,497 per household, is more than one order of magnitude less desirable
than charcoal, the nearest fuel on the same scale, at US$3120. This method of representing the results
of environmental analysis is complementary to the usual gravimetric life-cycle assessment (LCA) representation, and brings home clearly to decision-makers, especially non-LCA practitioners, the signicance
of environmental analysis results in terms that are familiar to all.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Most of the effects of the use of fossil fuels on the global environment are well-known and have been documented in many scientic studies in the literature. Developed countries, because of
their extensive need for energy, are the most to blame for the adverse effects of the use of these fuels, such as acidication, global
warming and ozone-depletion. Not as much attention seems to
have been given to the fact that less-developed countries, less
dependent on fossil fuels because of the costs associated with them
and their need for less energy generally, have insidiously become
major contributors to the global environmental degradation while
trying to satisfy one of the basic daily needs of man: cooked food
[18]. In developing countries, where laws are not properly en Corresponding author. Tel: +233 20 744 1239; fax: +233 30 251 7741.
E-mail address: gafrane@yahoo.com (G. Afrane).
0306-2619/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2012.03.041

forced, forests are indiscriminately cleared for the economic sustenance of the rural dwellers, but in the process an important sink for
carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere is decimated. In
addition, using the fuels produced from the forest for cooking
can affect human health and global warming directly [48]. Foell
et al. [8] estimate that 2.7 million people worldwide are at risk
from the use of biomass for cooking in households, with 511,000
childhood deaths in 2004 attributable to soot deposits on childrens lungs. Thus the production and use of fuels for cooking in
developing countries deserve serious attention.
In Ghana, surveys show that woodfuels used for household cooking, mainly rewood and charcoal, account for over 60% of the total
national energy consumption and constitute 2% of the Gross Domestic Product [9]. The 2000 Housing and Population Census of Ghana,
gave the breakdown of the cooking fuels as follows: rewood
(53.8%), charcoal (28.9%), crop residues (7.4%), liqueed petroleum
gas (LPG) (5.9%), kerosene (2.9%) and electricity (1.1%) [10]. Biogas

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G. Afrane, A. Ntiamoah / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 301306

is also being promoted currently as another renewable source, but

this has met with limited success, except in bio-sanitation usage
in a few schools, slaughterhouses and hospitals [9]. In a study conducted in Osun State in Nigeria, Anozie et al. [11] found that rewood and charcoal together accounted for over 40% of the cooking
fuel usage. In Nigeria, however, kerosene, perhaps because of government subsidy, accounts for 33% usage in the rural areas and
42% in the cities. The results of studies in Bangladesh [12] are similar
to those of Nigeria, in that kerosene usage in 53% of households is
quite high, and it is used alongside woodfuels. In India, a specic
trend did not emerge from a similar survey; a wide variation in preferred cooking fuels was observed across cities and states [13].
Life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle costing (LCC) are tools
used to make a cradle-to-grave analysis of the environmental and
economic consequences of using a product or providing services
[14]. Their application could lead, not only to a cleaner and healthier environment, but also to cost-savings in the design, production
and use of manufactured products. In this study the two tools were
applied to six cooking fuels used in Ghana. The life-cycle cost in
such an analysis has two components, namely, the direct monetary
costs associated with the equipment themselves, and the indirect
costs linked to the pollutants emitted by the equipment. Conventionally, direct equipment-related life-cycle costs are calculated
by summing all the charges related to the initial purchase, installation, operation and maintenance of a system throughout its operational lifetime [15]. These costs are of course given in a specic
currency, as one component of the life-cycle cost of the product.
The other component is the environmental burden associated
with the emissions from the stoves over a specied period of time.
The usual LCA analysis gives the pollution results in gravimetric
units, e.g. kg-CO2 equivalent. How to handle the second component, as well as the social and socio-economic aspects in a consistent and objective fashion continues to engage the attention of
workers in this eld. While there is a standardized method for conducting LCA in the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) 14040-14043 series, LCC and other methods do not yet have
an agreed international framework or methodology. Efforts have
been made by various workers in this direction, and these have
led to progressive improvements in life-cycle methods over the
years [14,1619]. A guideline (LCA type) for economic, social and
socio-economic is being developed by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), along with the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) under the UNEP/SETAC
Life Cycle Initiative as a basis for future standardization [17]. While
Wiedema [16] balks at the monetisation of environmental loads
from the various impact categories, this approach, in principle, enables the additivity of the results of the two cost components
(although the direct-cost component is normally negligible). The
emissions from the cookstoves during the cooking process are handled using the monetisation model of Steen [18,19].
Various studies have been conducted to estimate pollutant levels in cookstove emissions and their health impacts particularly in
developing countries. However, the results usually differ widely
due to variations in the cooking environment, assumptions made
in the studies and the measuring devices and techniques used
[2023]. This work uses theoretical analytical techniques with
measured and estimated emissions and costs data obtained from
surveys and other sources.

determined by surveying the market. The Centre for Environmental

Assessment of Product and Material Systems (CPM) at Chalmers
University has developed a systematic method for the incorporation of environmental aspects into product development. With
their Environmental Product Strategies (EPS) approach, undesirable environmental impact categories like global-warming and
acidication are classied as threats, while desirable circumstances like good human health and bio-diversity, which need to
be preserved, are classied as safeguards. A willingness-to-pay
(WTP) concept is based on an objective and realistic determination
of the amount of money one would be prepared to pay to restore a
degraded safeguard entity back to a chosen reference point. This
monetary value is known as the environmental load unit, ELU.
Steen and co-workers [19] have compiled environmental load
units, for most of the common emission compounds using this
concept.
2.2. LCA of rewood, kerosene and electricity as cooking fuels
2.2.1. Goal and scope of the LCA study
The goal of the current LCA study was to determine the life-cycle environmental impacts of rewood, kerosene and electricity,
which are used for cooking in Ghana, and to add the results to
those of an earlier work by the authors, which was done with biogas, charcoal and LPG [24]. This is meant to provide a complete
assessment and comparison of the environmental impacts of all
the major fuels used for cooking in the country. Another goal
was to estimate the life-cycle costs of the cooking-fuel systems,
which was not done in the earlier work. Where it was not possible
to nd the needed information locally, results of similar studies
conducted in other developing countries were substituted, as is
normally done in LCA studies. As in the previous study, a functional
unit of 1 MJ of energy delivered to the cooking pot was used as basis for comparison.
2.2.2. Boundaries of the LCA study
Firewood. Ninety percent of woodfuels used in Ghana are obtained
directly from the natural forests and the remaining ten percent
from wood waste, such as logging and sawmill residues, and
planted forests. In this study, it is assumed that the rewood used
for cooking is deadwood or dead branches broken from live trees or
wood obtained from land cleared for farming. Firewood is normally
transported to rural households by human beings who carry them
on their heads. Thus no environmental impacts were assigned to
their production and transportation. The traditional three-point
mud-stove was chosen as the representative rewood cookstove,
since it is still the most commonly used type in rural households.
The production of these stoves does not cause any signicant environmental damage.
Electricity. Hydropower constitutes about 70% of Ghanas grid electricity supply and hence electricity obtained from this source was
assumed for the study. The dams were built too many decades ago
for their construction per se to have any signicant effect on the
current environment. Standard LCA databases were however used
to estimate the impacts of electricity production from these plants.
Environmental impacts from the transmission and distribution of
power to households could not be assessed due to lack of relevant
data. In any case, these are deemed not to have a signicant effect
on the results.

2. Methodology
2.1. Life-cycle cost analysis of the cooking fuels
For the conventional cost-summing method, the actual costs of
the cooking fuels and their corresponding cookstoves were

Kerosene. In Ghana kerosene, whether imported or produced locally, comes from the Tema Oil Renery. Crude oil, the raw
material, is imported from Nigeria. Data on both upstream and
downstream processes are required. The upstream processes include exploration, production, and transportation to renery, while

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G. Afrane, A. Ntiamoah / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 301306

the downstream processes include rening the oil into kerosene

and other by-products. Data on both upstream and downstream
production processes were taken from the Ecoinvent database.
The database also takes into account inputs and outputs for the
construction, maintenance and operation of the production equipments. The nished product is lifted to lling stations scattered
across the country before dispensing to the general public. An average travelling distance of 250 km was assumed.
3. Life cycle inventory data
Inventory data on crude oil and electricity production were taken from the Ecoinvent LCA database. Emission factors due to the
transportation of kerosene from the renery to lling stations
came from the GaBi 4 database, while those resulting from the
burning of kerosene and rewood in cookstoves came from the
work of Jungbluth [1,20]. These data have been compiled in Table
1. Cooking with electricity does not cause any direct emissions [1].
The pollutants from cookstoves mainly arise from incomplete
combustion processes [2023]. They include particulate matter
(PM), carbon monoxide (CO) oxides of nitrogen (NOx), methane
(CH4), non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) such
as methane, benzene, toluene, xylene and sulfur dioxide (SO2).
These pollutants are of great concern due to their harmful effects
on human health. (The LCI data for the manufacture of the cookstoves themselves were not included in the analysis for both the current and previous studies because either they are not signicant
as in using mud-stoves for rewood or accurate and consistent
data are not available). Due to their adverse effects on human
health during the cooking stage, efforts must be made to reduce
cookstove emissions. The emissions at the cooking stage and their
ELU values in US$/kg are given in Table 1.
4. Results of life-cycle costs and impact assessment analyses
4.1. Results of life-cycle cost analysis
The life-cycle costs of cookstoves were calculated by summing
the costs of the cooking devices, their replacement and annual fuel
consumption costs, and discounting them at a rate of 10% using the
following equation [15]:

PA

1 in  1
i1 in


1

where P is the present worth, A the amount in dollars, i the discount

rate, and n the number of interest periods, in this case ten. The discount rate of 10% was chosen to approximate the prevailing annual
rate of ination in the country. The market prices of the various cost
components were obtained from direct and indirect sources like

eld/market survey, reports and expert opinions. Table 2 gives the

initial capital and replacement costs of the devices.
Ahiataku-Togobo [25] has estimated the amount of energy that a
given Ghanaian household would consume in a year while using the
various types of cookstoves. These results are given in Table 3, along
with the stove efciencies and the caloric values of the fuels.
Table 4 gives the life-cycle costs of the cooking fuel systems,
excluding the effect of their emissions. Not surprisingly rewood
is the cheapest among the fuels, since they do not undergo any processing before usage. In the urban areas, where it is sold, the cost of
rewood is mainly due to the transportation from the hinterland.
The table clearly shows that a shift from rewood to kerosene
(to save the forests, for example) would be the worst option, in
terms of cost. For the majority of rewood users who earn less than
US$2 a day, this would not be possible, regardless of its environmental implications.
Due to the obvious deleterious effect of using rewood and
charcoal on human health and the environment, government has
sought to replace them with LPG. Once again monetary considerations, both on the part of the users and also on the part of government (need for subsidies) have not made this option sustainable.
Estimates by the Energy Commission of Ghana also indicate that
the demand for LPG, if it were to replace charcoal and rewood
completely, could not be met [9].
4.2. Results of life-cycle impact assessment analysis
The results of the impact assessment for rewood, kerosene and
electricity have been added to those from the earlier study by the
authors and summarized in Table 5. In Table 6, the contributions of
the various fuels types to a particular impact category, as given by
the LCA results of Table 5, are converted into percentages. These results show, rstly, that electricity, rewood and biogas are not the
leading contributors in any category. Secondly, kerosene and LPG,
which are fossil-based fuels, lead in ve out of the seven selected
impact categories, while charcoal contributes the most to global
warming (GWP) and photochemical ozone creation (POCP).
The results of Table 6, while informative, unfortunately, mask
the environmental importance of local cooking fuels, especially
rewood, which does not make the highest contribution in any
of the categories indicated. Because petroleum fuels are often explored, extracted and transported for use in places far from where
they are produced, their effect on the environment is more global
in nature. Locally-derived fuels, such as rewood and charcoal,
tend to have a localized environmental impact. The impacts of rewood and charcoal can be properly appreciated by isolating the
cooking stage for consideration. This has been done and presented
in Fig. 1; it shows clearly the dominance of rewood at the cooking
stage. Firewood is the highest contributor in almost all the categories under consideration at this stage.

Table 1
Inventory data for cook-stove emissions (kg/MJ fuel).
Item

CO2
CO
NOx
N2O
SO2
NMVOC
CH4
PM
a
b

Charcoala

Biogasa

LPGa

Firewoodb

Keroseneb

Stove

Stove

Stove

3-mud stove

Stove (wick)

5.20E01
6.00E02
5.19E05
0.00E+00
0.00E+00
2.00E03
2.00E03
1.00E03

1.47E01
2.03E04
9.15E06
0.00E+00
1.02E05
6.10E05
1.02E04
4.82E06

1.20E01
1.00E03
5.74E06
0.00E+00
0.00E+00
1.00E03
1.91E06
0.00E+00

9.59E01
8.00E02
1.04E04
1.00E05
2.10E05
3.00E03
3.04E03
3.00E02

1.40E01
1.23E02
7.17E05
1.00E06
9.30E05
1.43E04
1.34E05
9.00E06

Afrane and Ntiamoah [24].

Jungbluth [1]; Smith et al. [6].

ELU [19]
(US$/kg)
0.14
0.42
2.72
48.97
4.18
2.74
3.48
46.03

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G. Afrane, A. Ntiamoah / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 301306

Table 2
Costs of cooking appliances (based on a 10-year lifetime).
Fuel

Type of cooking appliance

Cost of appliance (US$)

Life time (year)

Replacement frequency

Replacement cost (US$)

Firewood
Charcoal
Kerosene
LPG

3-stone mud stove

Improved stove
(12) Burner stove
(12) Burner stove
Gas storage vessel
(12) Burner stove
(12) Burner stove

0
10.34
20.69
25.00
41.38
34.48
48.28

3
5
3
5
10
5
5

3 times
1 time
1 time
1 time
None
1 time
1 time

0
10.34
20.69
25.00
None
34.48
48.28

Electricity
Biogas

Table 3
Cost of cooking fuels consumed, 2005.
Fuel

Stove efciency (%)

Caloric value
(kW h/kg)

Consumption/HHD
(kW h/year)a

Cost of fuel
(US/kW h)a

Cost of fuel consumption/HHD/year

(US $/kW h)

Firewood
Charcoal
Kerosene
LPG
Electricity
Biogas

14
18
35
45
65
55

3.9
8.5
12.7
13.0
1.0
6.7

7143
5556
2857
2222
1538

1.2
1.9
6.6
5.5
7.3

85.72
105.56
188.56
122.21
112.27
80.00b

Avg. size of household = 4.3; HHD Household.

a
Source [25].
b
Estimated.

Table 4
Results of life cycle cost calculations.
Item

Charcoal

Biogas

LPG

Firewood

Kerosene

Electricity

Analysis period
Cost of cooking devices (USD)
Replacement cost (USD)
Annual fuel cost (USD)
Discount rate
Residual costs (USD)
Life cycle cost (USD)

10 years
10.34
10.34
105.56
10%
0
669.35

10 years
48.28
48.28
80.00
10%
0
588.16

10 years
111.38
25.00
750.98
10%
0
862.36

10 years
0.00
0.00
85.72
10%
0
526.75

10 years
20.69
20.69
188.56
10%
0
1200.08

10 years
34.48
34.48
112.27
10%
0
758.86

Table 5
Characterization results of cooking fuel systems based on the CML 2001 environmental impact assessment method.
Impact category

Biogasa

Charcoala

LPGa

Firewood

Kerosene

Electricity

AP
EP

2.57E05
1.19E06

1.68E04
3.02E05

2.25E05
1.40E+00

9.3800E05
1.3520E05

1.9817E04
3.0039E01

1.4715E05
2.7826E06

FAETP
GWP
HTP
POCP
TETP

3.02E06
1.63E01
1.68E05
3.22E05
3.44E07

1.13E03
1.45E+00
1.64E03
1.19E02
1.29E04

4.95E02
1.20E01
3.71E+01
2.83E04
2.13E+00

1.4861E04
1.0319E+00
2.4902E02
3.2742E03
1.6917E05

3.0071E02
2.2220E01
1.5001E+01
4.7900E04
1.0000E+00

7.1472E04
4.4254E03
2.3298E03
1.8676E06
8.5388E05

Unit
kg SO2
kg PO3
4
kg DCB
kg CO2
kg DCB
kg C2H4
kg DCB

AP = Acidication Potential; EP = Eutrophication Potential; FAETP = Freshwater Aquatic Ecotoxicity Potential; GWP = Global Warming Potential; HTP = Human Toxicity
Potential; POCP = Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential; TETP = Terrestial Ecotoxicity Potential; DCB = 1,4-dichlorobenzene.
a
Source [24].

Table 6
Percentage contributions to overall characterization results.
Impact category

Firewood

Kerosene

Electricity

Biogas

Charcoal

LPG

AP
EP
FAETP
GWP
HTP
POCP
TETP

17.92
0.00
0.18
34.48
0.05
20.02
0.00

37.86
17.70
36.86
7.42
28.80
2.93
31.92

2.81
0.00
0.88
0.15
0.00
0.01
0.00

4.91
0.00
0.00
5.45
0.00
0.20
0.00

32.19
0.00
1.38
48.50
0.00
72.89
0.00

4.30
82.29
60.69
4.00
71.14
3.96
68.07

5. Discussion
A comparison of the impact assessment results shows an advantage in biogas and electricity usage in nearly all the investigated

indicators. It must be noted that electric stoves are reported to

emit no pollutants and hence no environmental impacts were
attributed to electricity at the cooking stage. The low impact scores
for electricity could also be partly due to the non-inclusion of the

G. Afrane, A. Ntiamoah / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 301306

Fig. 1. Relative impact category contributions at the cooking stage of the various
fuels.

Table 7
Annual environmental damage cost of cookstove emissions.
Fuel

Environmental
damage cost (MJ)

Consumption per
HHD/year (MJ)

Total damage
cost (US$)

Kerosene
Firewood
LPG
Charcoal
Biogas
Electricity

2.04E02
1.11E00
1.53E02
1.22E01
1.65E02
0.00E00

10285.2
25714.8
7999.2
20001.6

5536.8

268.3
36496.9
156.5
3120.3

0.0

dam construction stage. The construction of dams for electricity

generation in general can interfere extensively with the environment. The amount of building materials used and their sources,
also accounts for some environmental impacts. However, these impacts are difcult to quantify decades after the construction of such
structures, as is the case in Ghana.
A major concern has been the direct impact of cookstove emissions on women and children during cooking [5]. At this stage, the
study shows that rewood emits the most gaseous pollutants followed by charcoal, kerosene, biogas, LPG and electricity in that order. Indeed rewood emissions lead in all the potentials
considered in Fig. 1, except acidication. Cooking with rewood
contributes most to human toxicity (about 78%), followed by charcoal (20%). Thus for households where it is used, substituting rewood with charcoal could improve on their respiratory health
situation. While most of the emissions associated with rewood
occurs at the cooking stage, charcoal, emits most pollutants at
the production stage. The impact of crude oil extraction and transportation from Nigeria to Ghana contributed signicantly to LPG
and kerosenes overall higher scores in most of the categories. Taking both health and costs concerns into consideration therefore, an
obvious option may be to rst promote a shift from rewood to
charcoal.
Using the caloric value of these fuels and estimates of total annual energy consumption (Table 3), along with the ELU cost factors
given in Table 1, the total environmental damage cost of the fuel
consumed by a household in a year can be estimated. These results
are summarized in Table 7.
The life-cycle costs of the various indigenous fuels are easy to
rank, even without the analysis of Table 4. Firewood is virtually free,
(at least for rural dwellers) since it costs nothing to collect them
from the forest; then comes charcoal, which requires little processing and hence comes in relatively cheaply. Biogas is not yet popular
in Ghana, but where they are used, they are normally not for sale. It
is the petroleum products, kerosene, LPG, and electricity that have
signicant costs. However their ranking, in terms of cost, depends
largely on prevailing government policy; no elaborate calculations

305

or survey are required. Similar cost ranking can be done for the
cookstoves that go with these fuels. The study by Anozie et al.
[11] in Nigeria yielded similar results with rewood coming out
as the least expensive cooking fuel, and LPG the most expensive.
The real interest in these fuels, therefore, lies in the determination of their impact on the environment as a result of cooking, and
how this could be mitigated. The results of Table 7 are signicant
because they clearly quantify these impacts in terms that are
familiar and comprehensible to all. The single-score representation
clearly indicates the relative magnitudes of the potential effects of
the emissions on the environment and humans. Although cookfuel
emissions are difcult to characterize because of their dependence
on the fuel type as well as the stove design, the results for work
done by Smith et al. [7] in the Philippines may be used as representative of conditions in developing countries. The relativity of the
environmental damage costs between rewood and charcoal indicated in the table is similar to the relativity of their gravimetric
environmental impacts reported by Smith and others [6,7]. Specifically the impact of rewood is over ten times greater than that of
the nearest worse fuel, charcoal. These results could help focus
the attention of decision-makers.
With the rising demand for woodfuels amid dwindling forest
reserves, alternative sources of energy for cooking must be developed in order to slow down, and possibly reverse, the rate of deforestation. Solar energy provides an alternative sustainable option,
since the country receives a high level of solar radiation (4.5
6.5 kW h/m2/day [9]. It is estimated that 36% of the woodfuel
needs of developing countries could be met by the use of solar
stoves [26]. Several initiatives aimed at promoting solar cooking
have been carried out in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Success has however been limited by cultural barriers, relatively high start-up costs and
inadequate post-inception support [27]. Technical improvements
in the quality of cookstoves, promoting dedicated energy forest
cultivation, processing forest products, promoting the use of biogas
are all measures which could help reduce the dependence on
woodfuels. Other measures may be economic in nature, such as
subsidies and price control. This study has shown clearly that adding some value to the raw forest resources can help reduce their
impact on the environment and human health.

6. Conclusion
This paper concludes a two-part life-cycle study of the environmental impacts and costs of cooking fuels used in Ghana. Using conventional life-cycle costing methods, cookstoves and their
corresponding fuels were ranked as rewood, biogas, charcoal, electricity, LPG and kerosene. Two approaches were used with the emissions related to the production and use of these fuels: rst, the
standardized ISO LCA method was used to determine the environmental impacts of the cooking devices and their fuels from cradleto-grave; and second, the EPS method, which assigned monetary
weights to the emissions, was used for the cooking stage. By using
the monetary environmental load units, the impact of the systems
involving woodfuels, especially rewood, is brought forcefully
home even to lay decision-makers. While woodfuels can affect the
global environment and the health of those who use them for cooking at home, it is the latter effect which is more relevant to developing countries. This is because these countries have little inuence on
the global environmental outlook but the human health aspects affect their economies directly in terms of the pressure on their health
facilities and reduced national productivity. The work of Boadi and
Kuitunen [28] has demonstrated a positive correlation between the
use of woodfuels and respiratory health problems in Ghana, especially among children of low-income families.

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G. Afrane, A. Ntiamoah / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 301306

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