Assessment of energy poverty among rural households in Kwara State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT Energy poverty is a widespread phenomenon which is mostly attributed to the poor rural households in developing countries. This study was carried out to assess the energy poverty status and as well analyse the determinants of energy poverty among rural households in Kwara State of Nigeria thus providing information that may lead to improvement in the energy use efficiency of the rural households. A four-staged random sampling technique was used to select 150 rural households from Kwara State and were administered a well-structured questionnaire. The study employed the descriptive statistics, expenditure approach and logit regression model to identify the various energy used for cooking by the rural households, energy poverty status and the determinant of energy poverty in the study area, respectively. The result shows that the household stack the various types of energy with majority of them using the combination of modern and transitional energy types, with 59% using the traditional sources of energy and 49% using the modern sources in the past 7days. About 39% of the rural households were energy non poor, years of schooling, distance to energy source and household income significantly influence the energy poverty of the households. Although majority of the rural households spend above the energy benchmark for this study, however, majority of them uses the traditional sources of energy. The study therefore recommended necessity to establish regulatory frameworks for the protection of poor consumers to guarantee access to modern energy sources at affordable prices, which may involve the incorporation of subsidies.