This paper examines household energy use patterns in 52 developing economies by looking at primary sources of energy for cooking and heating using the most recent data available from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) conducted by UNICEF.

The objective is to understand differences in energy use patterns between urban and rural households, between the poor and the better-off, and across developing economies with different levels of income as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

Surveys show that the most commonly cited primary energy for cooking is wood, followed by gas—natural gas and, where natural gas is not available, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)—and then by electricity. Biogas use is rare and the use of ethanol and solar cookers is essentially non-existent. Households in the economies with a very high share of the population relying on clean energy as the primary source for cooking overwhelmingly prefer gas over electricity.

Households are far less likely to use clean forms of energy for space heating, presumably because of the much greater demand for energy and hence the much higher cost of heating with gas or electricity.