Recent and ongoing projects
Household survey, cooking diaries, and focus group discussions to investigate household cooking practices (“fuel stacking”) and develop behaviour change recommendations to advance clean cooking transitions - Cambodia
Mission:
The Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) Programme is a multi-year initiative funded by UK Aid, led by Loughborough University. It aims to deliver evidence-based and contextualised solutions to the problems of biomass-dependent cooking practices, with a focus on a transition towards electric cooking (eCooking).
The transition to electric cooking, by definition, relies on electricity supplies and electric cooking appliances that are accessible, reliable, and affordable. And while countries like Cambodia have vastly improved electricity access and uptake over recent years, many households continue to cook with alternative cooking fuels. An increasingly common phenomenon is that of combining electric cooking with other forms of cooking, in a process called ‘fuel stacking’.
Insuco, in collaboration with Geres, has been mandated to conduct research that will generate new and robust information about fuel stacking practices in urban contexts in Cambodia. The assignment will also feed into a broader set of objectives of the MECS programme.
Insuco has delivered the following deliverables:
- Completed survey instrument, digitised data set, and a report analysing the findings from the survey;
- Complete, cleaned digitised data set from the cooking diaries;
- Complete, cleaned digitised data set from the FGD discussions;
- A final report including behaviour change recommendations.
Results:
- Contributing to improvements in national survey data collection that can lead to more nuanced accounts of cooking fuels and behaviours over time;
- Identifying behaviour change interventions that facilitate transitions to modern energy cooking services;
- Applying a more nuanced understanding of cooking fuel usage and behaviours to develop carbon finance mechanisms for electric cooking.