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Deconstructing the (un)affordability of clean cooking fuels through a randomized trial in rural Tanzania

Nature Energy volume 10, pages 836–846 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Low-income users struggle to save for clean cooking fuel costs. We test whether a lockbox intervention paired with micro-saving nudges could alleviate the unaffordability of clean fuels. In a year-long stepped-wedge randomized control trial in Tanzania (n = 511), we find that compared to savings nudges only, a lockbox and savings nudges increased annual refills of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by 1.4 (0.054 per 2 weeks ([95% confidence interval: 0.043, 0.066], P < 0.0001)) and minimally decreased firewood use but had no effect on lags between LPG refills or the frequency of LPG and charcoal use. We find that easing liquidity constraints is insufficient for exclusive LPG use when LPG is the financial responsibility of only women, who ration LPG purchases to meet other household needs and social expectations. The financial and gendered realities of low-income consumers demand clean energy policies beyond easing liquidity constraints or targeted subsidies.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of study design.
Fig. 2: Amount saved in the lockbox as a fraction of the cylinder refill cost.
Fig. 3: Categories of LPG use during study.
Fig. 4: Qualitative results.

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Data availability

The deidentified data for this study are available via Github at https://github.com/agillwiehl/Deconstructing-the-un-affordability-of-clean-cooking-fuels-evidence-from-a-randomized-trial-in-rur and figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28327115 (ref. 63).

Code availability

Full replication files for this study are available via Github at https://github.com/agillwiehl/Deconstructing-the-un-affordability-of-clean-cooking-fuels-evidence-from-a-randomized-trial-in-rur.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (A.G.-W.), the Global Distribution Fund (A.G.-W.), University of California, Berkeley’s Center for African Studies’ Rocca Dissertation Grants (A.G.-W.), the James and Katherine Lau Climate Equity Fellowship (A.G.-W. and D.M.K.), the Foreign Language and Areas Studies Fellowship (A.G.-W.). We thank the women of Shirati for their incredible generosity in participating in this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy and Resources Group, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Annelise Gill-Wiehl, Isha Ray & Daniel M. Kammen

  2. Environmental Health Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Annelise Gill-Wiehl

  3. Agricultural and Natural Resources Economics and Business, University of Dar es Salaam, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

    Robert Katikiro

  4. Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Daniel M. Kammen

  5. Division of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Alan Hubbard

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  1. Annelise Gill-Wiehl
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Contributions

A.G.-W., I.R. and A.H. conceived and designed the experiments. A.G.-W. performed the experiments. A.G.-W. and A.H. analysed the data. R.K., D.M.K. and A.H. contributed materials and analysis tools. A.G.-W. and I.R. wrote the paper. R.K., D.M.K. and A.H. contributed materials and analysis tools.

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Correspondence to Annelise Gill-Wiehl.

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Supplemental Tables 1–10, Figs. 1–9, Surveys 1–3 and Focus Group Guides 1 and 2.

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Gill-Wiehl, A., Ray, I., Katikiro, R. et al. Deconstructing the (un)affordability of clean cooking fuels through a randomized trial in rural Tanzania. Nat Energy 10, 836–846 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-025-01778-w

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