Fuelwood is used primarily for cooking, which accounts for at least 60% of enduse energy consumption of households. Additional information about some countries reveal other end-use applications of fuelwood.

Cambodia. Statistics show that 92% of all households in Cambodia used firewood for cooking. The rest used charcoal, kerosene, or LPG. The proportion (of households using fuelwood) was higher in rural areas at 95.3%, while in urban areas, charcoal had become more popular and was used by 40% of households in Phnom Penh. In addition, in the rural areas, households was also using dung and agricultural residues (palm, straw, waste, paddy husk) for cooking and water heating together with or as a substitute for firewood.

India. Cooking accounted for 62% of all urban household end-use energy consumption. Available data also show that this proportion increases for low income households, reaching, for example, 79% for households with annual income of only up to 500 rupees (Table 3.9). In contrast, data also show that household energy consumption for water heating, space cooling, and lighting increases with income. Additional data for urban households indicate that fuelwood provided 32% of energy requirements for cooking (Table 3.10). However, this was second only to LPG which contributed 47%. The contribution of fuelwood was more significant for water heating.

Being the major energy end-use, cooking gets most of the fuel supplied to households. It accounted for almost 86% of fuelwood consumed in households. The remaining 14% were used for water heating (Table 3.11).

Nepal. Data on biomass fuels consumption by type of end-use are also available for Nepal. It can be shown that, among the household end-use energy consumption met by biomass fuels, cooking accounted for 72% (see Table 3.12). End-use energy consumption also included animal feeding (16.4%), heating/cooling (3.8%), agro-processing (4.7%), and other applications (3.5%). On the other hand, 78% of cooking energy needs were met by fuelwood. Corollarily, 75% of total fuelwood consumption went to cooking alone. Animal feeding took up another 15%.

Pakistan. Cooking accounted for 78.5% of household end-use energy consumption in Pakistan. The other household end-use applications were space heating (5.7%), water heating (7.5%), lighting (3.4%), and space cooling (1.6%). Woodfuels supplied 55% of energy used for cooking. Animal dung and crop residues shared 36%. The remaining 9% were provided by natural gas, LPG, and kerosene.

Table 3.8: Summary Wood Energy Information from Energy Balance Tables

Table 3.9: End-use Energy Consumption by Income Categories, India
(in percent)

Table 3.10: Share of Each Fuel for Different End-use in Urban Households, India
(in percent)

Table 3.11: Share of End-use in Urban Households Fuel Consumption, India
(in percent)

Table 3.12: Biomass Consumption by End-use, Nepal (1992/93)
(in PJ)

While 80% of energy from fuelwood and charcoal were spent in cooking, the remaining 20% were used for water heating (9.9%), space heating (8.0%), and others (1.9%).

In addition, the HESS also shows that of the possible multiple end-use of fuelwood, 54.5% were accounted for by cooking only. Cooking, space and water heating combined accounted for 20.6%, while almost the same proportion (19.8%) was shared by the combination of cooking and water heating.

Philippines. Cooking and water heating accounted for 90% of the end-use energy in households. The HECS survey in 1989 showed that while less than 6% of electricity consumed in the residential sector was used for cooking, more than one-third of kerosene, three-fourths of charcoal, and nearly all of LPG, fuelwood and crop residues used by households went to cooking. In fact, fuelwood provided 58% of the energy expended for cooking nationwide and 76% and 29% of those in the rural and urban areas, respectively.

Thailand. It is estimated that in 1990 cooking accounted for 76% of energy end-use in rural households (Chantavorapap, 1993). On the other hand, biomass fuels provided 97% of total cooking energy requirements. An earlier study places a higher estimate of 83% as the energy consumed in cooking by rural households, but gives a slightly lower estimate of 75% for all of Thailand’s households (urban and rural) (UNDP, 1989). The latter study also provides estimates on end-use consumption by income level (see Table 3.13). Data shows that the share of cooking in household energy consumption tends to decrease with higher income level, for example, declining from 87% at "very low" income level to 46% at "high" income level. The same can be said of fuelwood consumption, whose share in household energy consumption dropped from 20% at very low income level to barely 2% at high income level.