If you woke up this morning and cooked breakfast on a smoke-free stove, consider yourself blessed. A third of the world's population, 2.3 billion people, lack access to clean energy for cooking. This means they cook their meals on open fires or basic stoves and breathe in harmful emissions from burning firewood, agricultural waste, charcoal, and animal waste. .
In many parts of the world, cooking jobs are skewed toward women, making them especially vulnerable to inhaling harmful smoke from stoves. Exposure to this indoor air pollution is responsible for the premature deaths of millions of women and children each year. Therefore, it is essential to think about these issues on International Women’s Day 2024. Although it is not a new problem, some regions of the world, such as India and China, have already made significant progress in addressing it.
Achieving universal clean cooking is important not only for public health but also for environmental sustainability. By 2030, the equivalent of 1.5 Gt CO2 could be saved annually, roughly equivalent to the carbon emissions from all aircraft and ships today.
Financing has been identified as a major constraint to expanding access to clean cooking, with an annual funding requirement of as much as $8 billion (currently $2.5 billion). funding is needed most in rural areas and some regions of sub-Saharan Africa. —In countries such as Burundi and Sierra Leone, less than 10% of clean cookstoves are used. While financing is essential, it is equally important to understand where the funds should flow, which can benefit both the private sector and other key stakeholders.
Key funding areas for access to clean cooking
Carbon credits can be a useful financial instrument to finance efforts in this area. However, carbon credits for clean cooking projects are only a small part of the funding in the carbon credit space. Of his 1.8 billion carbon credits issued since 2004, only 5% have come from clean cooking. Companies in developed countries buy carbon credits to help meet climate goals by funding projects in non-industrialized countries. The International Energy Agency identified carbon credits as a key tool to improve access to clean cooking in its recent report on the 'Vision of Clean Cooking Access for All'. Significant challenges exist in measuring and verifying credit. Nevertheless, its use is likely to expand, especially in rural areas.
According to the above report, clean cooking stove projects in rural areas are considered to be highly additive. Additionality is an essential principle of these credits, meaning that without the credits the emissions reduction or removal would not have occurred. These credits are generated by reducing emissions through the adoption of cleaner alternatives to traditional stoves, such as improved cook stoves and electric induction stoves.
Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is another area expected to attract investment in the medium term. These LPG cookstoves remain the primary fuel for clean cooking access. Since 2010, about 70% of people who gained access to clean cooking did so through LPG. According to the IEA report, over the next few years, almost half of the access improvements will come from this source. LPG cylinders are the clean fuel of choice in many countries because they can be easily used from a bottled cylinder connected to a cooking stove. Last month, Bloomberg reported on Kenya's $400 million LPG investment plan. Under the plan, Kenya will centrally import LPG and expand storage capacity to attract private investors to build bulk LPG facilities.
However, governments and other stakeholders are aware of the negative effects of over-reliance on LPG on energy security. There are danger signs in subsidized LPG distribution in other countries. Indonesia turned from an exporter of LPG to a net importer in 2008. In its Clean Cooking Vision, the IEA has modeled its LPG production and consumption scenarios for sub-Saharan Africa to take advantage of clean cooking. The results show that even if Africa's gas production and refineries continue to produce similar amounts of LPG, domestic production will only meet around a quarter of this demand by 2030.
There are also concerns about whether investing in fossil fuel-based LPG infrastructure is the right long-term strategy at a time when the world is moving away from fossil fuels. Is there a risk that investments in this infrastructure will stall? With regard to reducing emissions from fossil fuel-based LPG cookstoves, the Clean Cooking Vision believes that transitioning from traditional cookstoves to LPG will reduce net greenhouse gas emissions. It is pointed out that this will lead to reductions. However, the latter question, which is more important for private players, has not been discussed and requires further investigation.
Therefore, governments are working to expand electric cooking in countries with high access to electricity, especially in urban areas. For example, in Kenya, where electricity costs are high in urban areas, the country is actively expanding electric cooking campaigns in urban areas through attractive policies such as promoting the use of electric pressure cookers suitable for Kenyan cuisine. It is also considering the introduction of electric cooking charges, which would allow consumers who adopt electric cooking to avoid being pushed up to a more expensive rate class.
Involvement of women throughout the value chain
To ensure that funds reach beneficiaries effectively and drive real progress, increasing efforts to involve women throughout the value chain would be beneficial. According to one study, women sell three times as many stoves as men. The same study found that women who received dedicated mentorship and entrepreneurial training were significantly more effective at scaling clean cooking.
Other research challenges the oversimplified assumption that simply involving women will improve clean cooking outcomes and highlights gender-based disparities in the field. It highlights the importance of strategically integrating women into appropriate value chain segments to provide economic benefits and empowerment for women. Although many projects involve women in selling to customers, women-led businesses remain underrepresented in key activities such as production and extensive retail distribution, and access to mass markets leads to higher sales and higher sales. Potentially profitable.
In the coming months, the International Energy Agency, in collaboration with the African Development Bank, will hold a major conference to delve deeper into these issues. We look forward to this conference bringing together all key stakeholders to address the $5.5 billion annual funding gap and provide greater clarity on the sustainable allocation of additional funding. We want a future where no one, even in the poorest parts of the world, risks the lives of women and children by breathing toxic fumes from these traditional stoves.
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