A total of 8,134 gigawatt hours (GWH) of electricity were consumed by households in the country. This is an increase of 1,289 GWH, or 18.8 percent, during the 6 year period. This reflects an average of 215 GWH per year.

Electricity consumption by households in the National Capital Region (NCR) and other urban areas increased by 27.8 percent on the average. Rural households, in contrast, showed a decline of 6.4 percent.

Except for Regions X and XII where estimated consumption of electricity dipped by 2.6 percent and 34.2 percent, respectively, in 1995, the level of electricity consumption in all regions increased, ranging from five to more than 100 percent compared with the 1989 figures.

Among the major uses of this energy are for lighting and for powered electrical and home appliances particularly in urban cities and municipalities through out the country.

Among the four conventional fuels, namely LPG, gas, diesel and kerosene, most households used LPG and kerosene. The household consumption for LPG amounted to 503 thousand tons, and 776 cubic meter for kerosene. When compared with the 1989 figures, these increases translated to 56.7 percent for LPG and 56.4 percent for kerosene at the national level.

Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) was widely consumed among urban and rural residents. Total consumption in 1995 increased by more than fifty percent when compared with the 1989 figures, i.e., 58.0 percent for urban and 52.6 percent, rural.

Kerosene like LPG remained to be a popular fuel used mostly in urban areas, giving a consumption increase of 84.6 percent and 34.9 percent in their rural counterpart.

The proportion of households using fuelwood decreased by 3.6 percentage points. Fuelwood total consumption during the year registering 14,557 thousand tons likewise plummeted by 20.5 percent from 1989. Rural consumption declined by about 29 percent, whereas fuelwood consumption in the urban areas increased by almost 19 percent. Although decreases in the number of household using it and total consumption were noted, fuelwood remained an important source of energy during the past 6 years.

Aggregate biomass residues consumption in the Philippines was approximately 3,668,000 tons in 1995. Consumption of this type of fuel was more than double in the urban areas (131.6%) when compared with the 1989 figures. It also appeared that demand for this type of fuel was also greater among rural residents whose consumption had increased by about 25 percent in the same period.

Overall, charcoal consumption was 770,000 tons in 1995, less than half of the total consumed fuel in the household sector in 1989. Charcoal was widely used in the rural households in traditional ironing (76.9%), and in the urban areas in cooking (77.7%).

The 1995 HECS results showed a number of households that have shifted fuels used primarily for cooking.

Household decisions to change usual fuels could have been brought about by economic and social reasons like price of fuel, availability and access to modern fuels or change in urban life styles.

Of the total 857 thousand households that switched their primary cooking fuel, the two main reasons for shifting to their new fuel were convenience and availability. These reasons ranked 1st and 2nd, respectively, from among the various categories given in the survey form. This may indicate that convenience and availability outweighed economic reasons like the change in the household income and price of fuel which ranked 3rd and 4th in the list.

The pace and extent to which household fuel-switching will take place in the future will have an important implication on the levels of fuel demands in the household sector.