Evaluation of methanol stove usage, health and safety impacts in four South African informal settlements: Users perspective

Abstract

In South Africa about two million people depend primarily on kerosene combustion in simple stoves. Due to poor construction of these stoves and fuel characteristics, the users are regularly exposed to risks of burn injuries, conflagrations, and obnoxious emissions. The wellbeing of the affected populations could be improved through kerosene substitution with cleaner and safer energy technologies. Candidate technologies for kerosene replacement in the country include electricity, LPG and emergent methanol stoves. This study reports on a post-intervention evaluation of methanol stoves in four informal settlements in Rand West Local Municipality in Gauteng Province, South Africa. The evaluation was accomplished through a quantitative survey that was administered to a random sample of 186 households in May 2023. This descriptive evaluation apprised users' interaction with the stoves, particularly satisfaction with safety, thermal and emissions performance, fuel affordability and availability. In addition, the study interviewed four government officials on programme objectives vis-à-vis outcomes and four vendors on the fuel supply situation and status thereof. Quantitative data was analysed with IBM SPSS Statistics Version 28, while thematic analysis was utilised to make sense of textual responses. The findings indicated that users were highly satisfied with the performance of the methanol stoves especially its ease of use (99 %), clean combustion (98 %), safety (97 %), reliability (93 %), and fast cooking (89 %). However, people were dissatisfied with the eventual fuel scarcity and comparatively higher cost of the fuel per cooking cycle. Overall the results suggest that a scaled-up methanol stove intervention is possible if fuel distribution and costing are adequately addressed. The lessons learnt in this study are useful to domestic energy planners across the African continent and the Global South.