HOUSEHOLD COOKING ENERGY CHOICE: THE CASE OF AMEKA WOREDA, HADIYA ZONE, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

The energy sector of Ethiopia continues to largely relay on traditional biomass energy due to limited access to modern energy sources to meet growing demand. This energy demand is mostly obtained from biomass fuel while it has many drawbacks. Therefore, this study aims to examine household cooking energy choices in Ameka woreda of Hadiya Zone, Southern Ethiopia. A cross-sectional data collected from a total of 118 sample households whereby 75(63.56%) were from the rural kebeles and 43(36.44%) were from urban kebele. The collected data analyzed using descriptive and econometric tools. Result of the descriptive analysis indicates that about 94.71% of the sampled households used firewood as a main cooking energy option and followed by crop residue and animal dung 47.38%, while most urban households using firewood as a main cooking energy accounted for 85.71%, followed by electricity 64.28% and charcoal 59.52%. The study further shows that in contrast to men, women engaged more in collecting cooking energy sources. The study also shows that households in rural kebeles are mostly using cooking energy sources through purchasing and collecting (42.31%) and the remaining are purchasing and urban areas are consuming household cooking energy through purchasing (57.5%).Besides, the households face several constraints to adopt cleaner cooking energy source among which low awareness towards clean cooking energy, lack of sufficient availability of clean cooking technology and unaffordability of the clean cooking options are the most considerable ones. Applying Multivariate Probit model, the study found that of the eleven explanatory variables, household’s cooking energy choice of significantly influenced by eight explanatory variables. More precisely, household size, distance to market and feeder road, household income, household expenditure on cooking energy, education, livelihood and sex of the household head significantly influenced the households cooking energy choice. The study forwarded relevant recommendation for government and development partners to work on the family planning, deployment of road infrastructure, promotion of alternative income generating activities, distribution of low cost modern cooking technologies, investments of renewable energy sources and implementing women empowerment programs towards modern cooking energy options.