Saving Africa's Tropical Forests Through Energy Transition a Randomized Controlled Trial

Charcoal production to meet the cooking needs of urban households is one of the leading causes of deforestation and degradation of Africa’s tropical forests. We randomly distributed high-cost Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) stoves to urban households through subsidy and on credit and measured their impact on charcoal consumption, deforestation and CO2 emission. We find that the treatment group reduced charcoal consumption by 30% 15 months after the intervention, corresponding to an average reduction in deforestation of 0.04 ha/household/year or aversion of 3.9 MT of CO2/household/year. The two treatments are not statistically significantly different. Still, a social cost-benefit analysis that considers the social value of carbon (SSC) saved due to the LPG stoves suggests that the benefit of the stoves is 30-fold larger than its cost under credit and 19-fold larger under subsidy, which indicates that credit is the most socially effective means of supporting LPG interventions. We also find that LPG stoves reduced cooking time by 69% 15 months after the interven- tions. The results highlight the importance of improving access to credit to encourage urban households to switch to cleaner energy sources and save the remaining forest resources of Africa