Impact of Access to Sustainable Energy Survey 2021-2022

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and Statistics Norway (SSB) conducted a survey named Impact of Access to Sustainable Energy Survey (IASES) from 2019 to 2022. This survey, was conducted in Mainland Tanzania and was jointly funded by the Government of Tanzania and Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). The current report builds on the Sustainable Development Goal number 7 (SDG7.) and its indicators which articulates on the need to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030.
i. Access and Connection to Electricity
Mainland Tanzania uses several key indicators to measure access to electricity. The Rural Energy Agency (REA) considers households to have access if there is an electric pole in the village, hamlet, or mtaa (street). Based on this definition; the results show that, the share of households residing in communities with access to electricity is 72 percent.
The household is connected to electricity if there is an electric bulb in the house. According to the results, the percentage of households connected to electricity increased from 32.8 percent in 2016/17 to 45.8 percent in 2021/22, implying that more than 2 million households in Mainland Tanzania, have been connected to electricity over the last six years.
The proportion of households connected to electricity is higher in urban than in rural areas and highest in Dar es Salaam region where almost nine out of ten households are connected to electricity compared to seven out of ten connected in other urban areas, and about four out of ten connected in rural areas.
The percentage of households living in communities connected to electricity is large. These households are not necessarily connected but only that connection is possible in the community. Even in rural areas 2 of 3 households live in communities with connection to electricity. Remarkably, up to 95.0 percent of these communities have either a grid, mini-grid, or other sources of electricity.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also cover energy services. The SDG indicator 7.1.1 considers households as having access if their supply of electricity is able to provide light for at least 4 hours a day and at least 1 hour at night on average. Overall, just above half of the households fulfil this goal. Furthermore, almost 3 of 4 households in Mainland Tanzania live in communities connected to electricity.
About 30 percent of all households in Mainland Tanzania rely on grid as their main source of electricity. In Dar es Salaam this applies to almost 90 percent, while only about 10 percent of the households report grid as the main source of electricity in rural areas. About 30 percent of rural households do not have any form of electricity
The report also gives a detailed picture on households' access to electricity regarding capacity, availability, reliability, quality, affordability, and legality of electricity, as well as health and safety. This multi-dimensional approach identifies two main next challenges in Mainland Tanzania. The first challenge is ensuring availability and reliability of access to electricity for households with grid by ensuring the capacity of power delivery and improved maintenance of the grid-net. The second challenge is to identify the barriers for solar power in remote areas.
ii. Cooking Solutions
Two out of three households in Mainland Tanzania used firewood as their main source of energy for cooking. The second most common source of energy used for cooking was charcoal, used by one out of four households. Firewood is the dominant fuel in rural areas, while charcoal dominates in urban areas. The percentage of households using modern, clean and efficient sources of energy for cooking such as electricity, biogas and LPG is small. It is two percent in Dar es Salaam, three percent in other urban areas and negligible in rural areas.
In urban areas, hardly any household has a traditional open charcoal burner without any option to stop or regulate the airflow to improve efficiency, and hence reduce the emission of smoke and gases.
A considerable percentage of the households in urban areas use stoves with improved designs or even better, with a chimney. In Dar es Salaam, 9 in 10 households and in other urban areas 2 in 3 households, have stoves with some sort of improved design. In rural areas the situation is very different as only 1 out 10 households have an oven with some improved design. Cookstove efficiency is much higher in urban than in rural areas.
Kitchens in rural areas generally have the best ventilation. This is mainly due to cooking in open air or having a separate open kitchen house with at least three open sides.
Around half of persons engaged in cooking are exposed to emissions from the stove for about 2 hours per day. Hence, they are exposed to emissions from the main oven for a considerable time.
Two thirds of households in urban areas and 9 in 10 households in rural areas spend less than 5 percent of their income on fuel for cooking. The prices of fuel are generally higher in urban areas, but so is the household income. The best way of reducing the burden of households in the provision of energy for cooking in rural areas, is increasing the efficiency of cookstoves.
The education of the household head influences the choice of cooking solutions substantially, meaning that the more the educated household head, the more efficient is the cooking solution applied. On the other hand, gender of the household head has less impact on the choice of cooking solutions.