Cleaner Cooking, Persistent Firewood: Household Fuel Transition, Stacking and Avoided Emissions in Honduras, 2013–2025

Household firewood combustion is a major source of air pollution, greenhouse gases and forest pressure in Central America. We examine the clean cooking transition in Honduras using twelve rounds of the national household survey (2013–2025; 72,447 households). We model the primary cooking fuel, decompose the decline in firewood use, analyze directly measured fuel stacking, test the role of the real price of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and quantify firewood demand and emissions. The share of households cooking primarily with firewood fell from 55.6% in 2013 to 37.7% in 2025. Urban residence (−36.0 percentage points), grid electricity (−24.2 points) and income were the strongest correlates of lower firewood use. Changes in household characteristics explain only 19.6% of the 16.2-point decline since 2017. Between 13% and 16% of households stacked fuels, devoting 54–58% of their cooking time to biomass stoves. The real LPG price moved almost in parallel with the time trend, and no robust price association was found. Relative to a counterfactual with the 2017 fuel–stove mix, the transition avoided about 1.9 Mt of firewood and 1.0 Mt CO2e (net of LPG) in 2025 (1.6–2.2 Mt of firewood under alternative assumptions). Addressing persistent stacking and rural access can consolidate these gains.