Energiedienstleistungen im Haushalt im Zusammenhang mit Kochen und deren Wechselwirkungen mit Materialbeständen und -flüssen: Eine sozialökologische Untersuchung in Äthiopien

The cooking practices of households (HH) in least developed countries (LDCs) are largely determined by their needs for energy services (ES) and related benefits, and energy carriers and the stoves used. HH cooking is mainly based on biomass combustion. This overall biomass demand has been linked deforestation, soil erosion and biodiversity as well as indoor air pollution (IAP). In LDCs, interdependencies between ES, energy carriers, stove types and everyday practices exist. Cooking practices offer a range of ES besides food and water preparation. Socio-ecological metabolism (SEM) research and the stock-flow-service (SFS) nexus approach are especially suitable to investigate human-nature relations and sustainability challenges. The linkages between HH energy, ES demand and practices are curcially important for advances in SFS nexus research. While most SFS research is done at national scales, bottom-up ES research is scarce and linkages to social processes are rarely investigated. The research project aims to answer the following main questions: How do HH ES demand, available stove type and energy carriers influence cooking practices? What is the impact of HH-level ES demand on material and energy flows as well as GHG emissions? What insights for potential HH sustainable energy transitions (SETs) does the ES perspective offer? This study closes a fundamental gap in empirical SFS research by applying the concept at local scale to investigate linkages to social processes at the HH level. The integration of HH-level ES into Material and Energy Flow Analysis (MEFA) analysis in an LDC as an innovation will increase the usefulness of the analytical framework. Moreover, this research project will present biophysical mass/energy flows and GHG emissions based on empirical HH-level ES as the starting point for MEFA. Research findings may be able to impact on the framework conditions for SETs on a systemic level and thus go well beyond the local context of this case study.