In The Democratic Republic of the Congo,
the study assesses the use of cooking
energy by households in Kinshasa and
determines the energy model of this city.
It is a contribution to the reflection on the
substitution of the use of wood energy as
the main cooking energy by clean energies. Wood energy is one of the driver
forces of deforestation and forest degradation in the Congo Basin. A quantitative
survey was conducted with a sample
of 1,154 randomly drawn households in
the city of Kinshasa. These households
were subdivided into quantiles of three
classes: low-, middle- and high-income
levels. The results of the study show that
households in Kinshasa use six energies
for cooking food in different proportions. These are sawdust (2.6%), firewood
(14%), charcoal (95%), kerosene (12%),
electricity (60%) and liquefied petroleum gas (4%). The comparison made
of the data collected with the energy
ladder model, a model which indicates
that the household moves to higher
level energies as its income improves,
could not make it possible to validate
the said model because the households
of medium income level do not use transition energies (charcoal and kerosene)
more than the other classes. Similarly,
the comparison of the data with the
energy stacking model, a model which
stipulates that when income increases,
the household tends to increase the
number of energies used without abandoning the old ones, could not make it
possible to validate this model given that
only high-income level households that
stack more energies. The policy to be
implemented to reduce the use of wood
energy should aim to improve electricity
supply at an affordable price, as well as
the promotion of LPG.