This paper presents results from a comparative analysis of environmental income from approximately 8000 households in 24 developing countries collected by research partners in CIFOR’s Poverty Environment Network (PEN). Environmental income accounts for 28% of total household income, 77% of which comes from natural forests. Environmental income shares are higher for low-income households, but differences across income quintiles are less pronounced than previously thought. The poor rely more heavily on subsistence products such as wood fuels and wild foods, and on products harvested from natural areas other than forests. In absolute terms environmental income is approximately five times higher in the highest income quintile, compared to the two lowest quintiles.

Promoting access to clean household cooking energy is an important subject for policy making in low‐ and middle‐income countries, in light of urgent and global efforts to achieve universal energy access by 2030 (Sustainable Development Goal 7). In 2014, the World Health Organization issued “Guidelines for Indoor Air Quality: Household Fuel Combustion”, which recommended a shift to cleaner fuels rather than promotion of technologies that more efficiently combust solid fuels. This study fills an important gap in the literature on transitions to household use of clean cooking energy by reviewing supply chain considerations for clean fuel options in low‐ and middle‐income countries. For the purpose of this study, we consider electricity, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), alcohol fuels, biogas, and compressed biomass pellets burned in high performing gasifier stoves to be clean fuel options. Each of the clean fuels reviewed in this study, as well as the supply of electricity, presents both constraints and opportunities for enhanced production, supply, delivery, and long‐term sustainability and scalability in resource‐poor settings. These options are reviewed and discussed together with policy and regulatory considerations to help in making these fuel and energy choices available and affordable. Our hope is that researchers, government officials and policy makers, and development agencies and investors will be aided by our comparative analysis of these clean household energy choices.