Kerosene Use Reduction Improves Disability Adjusted Life Years, Economy, Clean Energy

Clean energy sources were now being considered by individuals who had opted not to rely on inefficient and polluting kerosene lamps for household lighting. However, shifting away from kerosene and minimizing the associated impacts were more complex than simply providing an electrical connection, since many homes had already utilized unreliable and inadequate electric light sources with kerosene lamps.

According to a study that was published in Environmental Research Letters, users of kerosene persist despite a definite body of evidence that proved it posed health risks. Kerosene production had also been a financially inefficient process of providing low-level energy service.

Nicholas Lam, the lead author of the study, was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois. He started working as part of the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program. He pioneered the study for understanding characteristics of homes relying on kerosene and the potential benefits of its replacement. His study proposed better strategies for shifting towards cleaner alternatives, according to a feature from Phys.org.

The clean energy study set its focus on India, because 380 million people there continued to use kerosene as most families' lighting source. According to the study, 64 percent of kerosene utilized for lighting was as a supplement for electricity, which meant that increasing electricity access without improved reliability will make only a small impact in the amount of kerosene used.

Clean energy could be accomplished instead by eliminating subsidies by 2030 to help reduce kerosene use in the country by 97 percent. The study noted that the shift will modestly improve health with a reduction of 300,000 disability adjusted life years, a basis of population health that referred to the amount of years lost that are attributed to disability, bad health, or premature death. Transitioning from subsidies would be beneficial to the economy as well, since the deadweight loss of the subsidy was estimated at $200-950 million, Clean Technica reported.