The UK has pledged to help developing countries transition to ‘clean’ forms of cooking that do not burn wood or coal. At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, Anneliese Dodds, the UK’s Minister for Development, announced a package of £74 million in support of clean cooking solutions. The goal is to extend access to clean cooking to an additional 10 million people across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Indo-Pacific.[i]
Clean cooking has been part of the global development agenda for decades, but has really gained momentum in recent years, with a number of international commitments and high-profile events in 2024. A May 2024 Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa drew participation from 55 countries, who pledged a total of $2.2bn and committed to making 2024 a ‘pivotal year’ for improving access to clean cooking.
This new momentum is welcome in the clean cooking sector, which has historically struggled to mobilise funding and awareness, despite the well-documented social and environmental costs of traditional cooking fuels such as kerosene, wood and charcoal. Often burned in open fires or basic cookstoves, these fuels pose a significant threat to public health through household air pollution, contributing to an estimated 3 million premature deaths each year.[ii] Women and girls – disproportionately responsible for daily cooking globally – are particularly vulnerable to these harms, as well as the time poverty associated with the use of traditional fuels, with women and children in low-income countries spending an average of 10 hours per week gathering fuel and tending fires.[iii] In addition, polluting fuels are a notable driver of environmental degradation and climate change from unsustainable biomass harvesting and the emission of greenhouse gases.
While the uptick in funding pledges from donors and national governments is encouraging, there are still many uncertainties about how best to promote clean cooking. Which clean cooking solutions should be prioritised, how is progress measured, and how can access at scale be made affordable for poorer communities? Below, we consider some of the challenges that FCDO will need to address, to deliver on its commitment.
Measuring progress
As they transition to cleaner cooking solutions, households often use multiple fuels or cooking solutions concurrently, a practice known as ‘fuel stacking’. If households continue to use traditional fuels alongside cleaner options, the health and environment benefits from the transition may be reduced. The extent of fuel stacking is not well captured in the statistics, as most household surveys have historically asked respondents only about their primary cooking fuel. This presents an added challenge for funders offering results-based financing (RBF), where payment is linked the proven delivery of specific, pre-agreed results or outcomes. To address this, reporting initiatives like the World Bank’s Multi-Tier Framework, launched in 2015, collect more detailed data on user behaviours and cooking conditions. The use of metering technologies for various fuel types has also increased within the clean cooking sector in recent years, which generate more accurate data on usage volumes and patterns. Recognising the complexity of behaviours allows for more nuanced interventions and better measurement of results.
Financing solutions
The clean cooking sector requires a dramatic increase in investment levels, if it is to achieve the SDG goal of universal access to clean cooking by 2030. Despite rising interest in the sector, existing finance flows are nowhere near to reaching the estimated $8bn that needs to be leveraged annually until 2030 in order to achieve universal clean cooking access.[iv]
Carbon finance (though voluntary carbon markets) is an increasingly important source of finance for clean cooking. Replacing inefficient cooking devices with clean ones that have fewer CO2 emissions is one method of offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. These offsets are traded in carbon markets, where individuals and organisations can buy credits to offset their carbon footprint. Carbon markets are one of the most promising methods of attracting finance into clean and improved cooking supply chains, especially in markets considered too risky for commercial lenders. The promise of carbon revenues can in turn help leverage the commercial capital needed to get projects up and running. Since carbon finance is results-based (i.e., only paid when the uptake of improved cooking technologies is verified), it also incentivises commercial suppliers to build in customer care and retention, to enable them to collect that data.
Despite the advantages of using carbon finance to promote clean cooking, the sector has faced some bad publicity in recent years, following claims that some clean cookstove projects may have overstated their environmental benefits.[v] This has led to a slowdown in the growth of carbon markets and lowered carbon prices,[vi] hampering the scale-up of clean cooking finance.
These criticisms have pushed project developers and buyers to revisit their approaches to monitoring, reporting and verifying results (impacts) from clean cookstoves. For example, over the last year and a half, the CCA-led Clean Cooking and Climate Consortium (4C) has led a sector-wide effort to develop a new methodology for crediting emissions reductions from cookstove projects. The Comprehensive Lowered Emissions Assessment and Reporting (CLEAR) Methodology for Cooking Energy Transitions is the first-ever methodology to be applicable to all cooking transition scenarios, including metered and non-metered fuels, which will simplify monitoring and reporting. This new methodology is intended to become the standard for cookstove projects under the Paris Agreement (Articles 6.2 and 6.4) and the voluntary carbon market.
Prioritising solutions
The potential routes to clean – or cleaner – cooking encompass a wide range of technologies, fuels, initiatives, business models and funding instruments. Each solution entails trade-offs in terms of ease and cost of deployment, outcomes delivered, and suitability to local contexts.
The use of Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), an unavoidable by-product of oil refining and natural gas extraction, and one of the most widely used cooking fuels in both developed and developing countries, has driven roughly 70% of global progress in clean cooking access over the last decade.[vii] LPG burns more efficiently and has lower emissions than biomass or coal, and can be readily distributed to households, once supply chains are established for refilling gas canisters. Successful national LPG campaigns, such as those in India and Indonesia, have demonstrated LPG’s potential to expedite clean cooking access at scale. However, LPG is a finite, fossil fuel resource, raising concerns about its long-term sustainability, and there is reluctance within the development community to spend international public finance promoting a non-renewable resource. Additionally, the fuel’s reliance on international supply chains and fluctuating prices creates energy security risks. For example, during its subsidised LPG campaign, Indonesia transitioned from a net exporter of LPG to importing around 6,500 kt of LPG a year. When international LPG prices doubled in early 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the government was forced to withdraw its subsidies, resulting in millions of people reverting to traditional fuels. For these reasons, some stakeholders advocate for “leapfrogging” directly from traditional biomass fuels to renewable energy sources like e-cooking.
Electric cooking (‘e-cooking’), including hotplates, induction plates and pressure cookers, has served as a clean cooking solution for 12.5% of those who gained access over the last decade.[viii] Provided the electricity is generated from renewable sources, e-cooking leads the way in developmental benefits, as an energy efficient solution that emits no greenhouse gases or household air pollution. However, the slow pace of electrification in many of the countries with the lowest access to clean cooking makes this a longer-term solution.
While they have played a fairly niche role to date, biogas and bioethanol are also valuable additions to the clean cooking portfolio. Made from agricultural residue and waste, they are responsible for 10% of the gains in clean cooking access over the last decade and will continue to play a small but important role moving forward.
Improved cookstoves (ICS) refers to stoves designed to burn biomass more efficiently, resulting in lower smoke and particulate emissions and reduced overall fuel consumption. While not a fully ‘clean’ solution, they offer a transitional step towards cleaner cooking in low-income settings, accounting for around 30% of clean cooking access gains over the last decade.[ix] The advantage of improved cookstoves lies in their low cost and suitability for rapid deployment in rural or remote areas. However, some studies have cast doubts on the health benefits of improved cookstoves, as the expected benefits often assume levels of emissions reductions that are achieved only in laboratory conditions, and do not capture the complexity of cooking behaviours such as fuel stacking.
This wide variety of potential clean cooking solutions, each with their own mix of advantages and disadvantages, has made it difficult for the sector to settle on harmonised approaches. However, a consensus has emerged that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, and that a portfolio of approaches will be needed to achieve universal access. Ultimately, national policy makers must be in the driving seat in determining which investments to prioritise, based on the unique needs of different geographical areas and market segments.
There is a growing number of tools to support national governments in their decision making. For example, the UK government’s Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme recently developed a knowledge brief on available methodologies for integrating clean cooking into national energy planning.[x] £44 million of the UK’s recent commitment supports a 5-year extension to the MECS programme up to 2030. The report received co-funding from the OPEC Fund for International Development under the Climate, Finance, and Energy Innovation Hub, a multi-stakeholder platform launched in 2022 to leverage financial and technical knowhow in support of access to clean energy, including modern cooking. The OPEC Fund’s 2024 Clean Cooking Report, supported by Agulhas, further outlines how such collaboration platforms can play an essential role in bringing together expertise on clean cooking challenges and opportunities to support national efforts.
Making the most of commitments
Clean cooking remains a vital SDG agenda, with enormous potential to advance public health, gender equity and economic resilience. Access to clean cooking has also been deemed an essential part of a just energy transition, aligned with international climate and environmental goals, and was identified at COP27 as a ‘breakthrough’ area for halving emissions by 2030.[xi]
While the growing momentum behind the clean cooking agenda in 2025 is exciting, there is still much work to be done in identifying robust financing and business models that can make diverse clean cooking solutions attractive and affordable across diverse local contexts.
Agulhas was pleased to support the OPEC Fund with the preparation of an overview of opportunities and challenges in the clean cooking sector.
[i] UK to help give 10 million people worldwide access to clean cooking, GOV UK, Press Release, 14 Nov 2024, link.
[ii] IEA (2023), A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All, link.
[iii] Clean Cooking Alliance, Gender and Clean Cooking, undated, link.
[iv] A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All, IEA, 2023, link.
[v] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/23/clean-cookstove-carbon-offsets-overstate-climate-benefit-by-1000-percent
[vi] https://climatefocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/VCM-2023-Review-Report.pdf
[vii] International Energy Agency (2023) A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All, World Energy Outlook Special Report, link.
[viii] International Energy Agency (2023) A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All, World Energy Outlook Special Report, link.
[ix] International Energy Agency (2023) A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All, World Energy Outlook Special Report, link.
[x] Integrating Clean Cooking into National Energy Access Planning: Tools and Considerations for Planning and Implementing eCooking. https://mecs.org.uk/publications/integrating-clean-cooking-into-national-energy-access-planning-tools-and-considerations-for-planning-and-implementing-ecooking/
[xi] [1] Climate Champions (2022) Clean cooking names as a critical “Breakthrough” to halve emissions by 2030’, UNFCCC, link.
