One consequence of the meteoric rise in the price of fossil gas has been that cooking meals is now much more expensive. In the UK, food bank users declined potatoes as they couldn’t afford to boil them. In Germany, increased heating and petrol costs have even forced some food banks to suspend their services.
In low and middle-income countries, over 2.5 billion people cook with liquefied petroleum gas (often abbreviated to LPG). This is a byproduct of fossil gas extraction that is compressed into cylinders for distribution. The price of LPG has also increased sharply in recent months, which has led to fewer people using it for cooking. Sudden price changes in LPG typically see households revert to cooking with more polluting alternatives, such as wood and charcoal, which can be gathered for free or bought in small amounts.
A Nigerian news article published in December 2021 described a woman who started cooking with gas two years ago but has since returned to using charcoal as LPG prices have soared. In India, rising LPG prices coupled with the scaling back of a government programme to subsidise cooking gas are forcing people to use firewood. This has also been documented in Rwanda, Brazil, Vietnam and Kenya.
