1.

Introduction

This section presents the background information about traditional cooking and how
energy is connected to development. Furthermore, general and specific objective and
methodology will be presented together with the limitations for this study.

1.1 Background

Because of cooking with bad equipped stoves 2 million humans worldwide die
prematurely every year of illnesses cause by polluted air. Women additionally tend to
suffer with these health effects more than men. Today, about 2.7 billion citizens in the
rural areas around the world use biomass as primary energy source through simple
stoves or open fire for cooking. It is stated that a cleaner housing condition will reduce
asthma, rhino conjunctivities and eczema symptoms in school aged children.

About 1.2 billion of the world’s population has no access to electricity and the majority of
these lives in developing countries. In a developing country the majority of the
population lives on far less money with much fewer basic public services compared to
the population in the industrialized countries. The Human Development Index, a
composite statistics of life expectancy, education and income per capita, is also in
comparison low in these countries. In estimations 550 million humans will live without
access to electricity by 2040. During the same time the electricity demand will increase
with 70% because of the industrialized countries needs. Figure 1 below shows the links
between energy and poverty and how these factors are connected.