Nearly one third of the world still relies on rudimentary cooking means with grave consequences Today, 2.3 billion people worldwide – nearly one third of the global population – still cook their meals over open fires or on basic stoves, breathing in harmful smoke released from burning coal, charcoal, firewood, agricultural wastes, and animal dung. These practices can still be found in 128 countries today—where households do not have the tools or means to reliably cook meals using clean burning fuels. Even the simplest, widely available cooking devices could improve this situation, including devices like camp stoves using liquefied petroleum gases (LPG) and electric hotplates. A lack of clean cooking contributes to 3.7 million premature deaths annually, with women and children most at risk. Poor indoor air quality is a leading cause of premature death worldwide. In Africa alone, women and children account for 60% of early deaths related to smoke inhalation and indoor air pollution. This is primarily the result of basic cooking practices that lead to respiratory complications and cardiovascular diseases. Women disproportionately endure the negative consequences of rudimentary cooking, while afforded limited waysto change to cleaner solutions. In addition to health risks, a lack of clean cooking prevents many women and girls from accessing education, earning a wage, or starting a business that would deliver financial autonomy. In many parts of the world, they typically have little say over household spending, with other purchases prioritised over clean cooking devices. Under-representation of women within executive institutions means that clean cooking also remains low on the political agenda.

What is clean cooking? For the purposes of this report, clean cooking access is defined as a household that has reliable access to and uses as their primary cooking means, fuels and equipment that significantly limit or avoid the release of pollutants harmful to human health. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published in 2018 the international standards for laboratory testing of cookstoves, which describes tiers of stoves, and which types of stoves meet these standards, and specifies testing and reporting protocols to measure emissions, thermal efficiency, safety and durability. The World Bank used similar metrics, with the addition of affordability, to develop the Multi-Tier Framework for Clean Cooking. As stoves vary greatly on these performance metrics it is important to ensure deployed stoves are providing the expected results and can be classified as clean cooking. In this report, clean cookstoves is defined as tier 4 and above. There are several different clean cooking technologies that meet this definition, including stoves using natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), electricity, bioethanol, and biogas. Improved biomass cookstoves (ICS) of ISO tier 3 can act as a transitional technology from traditional biomass cookstoves and three-stone fires to the clean-cooking technologies listed above, and play an important role in providing immediate, meaningful health benefits to areas where needed infrastructure is unlikely to reach in the coming years. When considering the different technologies used to reach universal access, the IEA examines a range of criteria including affordability, reliability, safety, convenience, and sustainability.

Definition of cooking technologies

Cooking stoves assessment of performance against key metrics

Progress to date and status today Today, 2.3 billion people live without access to clean cooking, largely in sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia. In sub-Saharan Africa, 29 countries have access rates below 20%, with half of the almost 1 billion people without clean cooking access concentrated in five countries (Nigeria, Ethiopia, DRC, Tanzania, Uganda). In Asia, access rates are higher with only seven countries, of which five small island countries, having access rates below 20%. However, large countries like China, India, and Indonesia, who have higher access rates, are still home to many people without access. Countries in Latin America also do not have universal access to clean cooking, but most countries have over 80% access rates, and the population without access is less than 75 million across the region.

Population without access to clean cooking in Africa, 2022

Population without access to clean cooking in developing Asia 2022

Most of these incentives are typically available to all consumers and are not targeted to those most in need of financial support. This creates a substantial fiscal burden on public finances. During the energy crisis, many countries, such as Sri Lanka, India, Kenya, Sudan and Nigeria changed their support schemes, balancing growing debt burdens with the public need for support. Sudden changes in these schemes can negatively impact households and enterprises providing clean cooking solutions. Timely adjustments to fiscal policy must be balanced against enduring policy support to ensure clean cooking support does not interfere with prevailing fuel and capital market trends. See chapter 3 for more discussion on managing affordability.

Share of people without access who live in a country with key clean cooking policies, 2022

Development finance plays an important role in today’s clean cooking ecosystem, especially where public spending from national sources is limited. However, levels of international support remain far too low and fail to attract sufficient private sector participation. In the STEPS, international support remains rather flat, with some growth from offsetting instruments and climate finance that have helped tip many clean cooking projects toward profitability, such as those from the Green Climate Fund or the Global Environment Facility.

People gaining access to clean cooking in the Access for All scenario by 2030 in sub-Saharan Africa

Natural gas is a major fuel for cooking in many parts of the world today but is likely to play a small role in providing first access to people switching from traditional and basic cooking means by the end of the decade. A lack of natural gas storage and distribution systems in many urban areas in Africa and developing Asia make LPG a lower cost solution than building new pipelines. In regions without heating demand, the economic case for natural gas pipeline expansion remains limited. Even in sub-Saharan African countries developing new natural gas production, gas is often prioritised for power generation and industrial production in the Access for All scenario. Where natural gas is already a prominent cooking fuel, it continues to play a prominent role in cooking in 2030.

Investment Total investment in clean cooking access is substantially lower than what is required to deliver on broader climate and energy objectives. Today, clean cooking investments are around USD 2.5 billion annually. In the Access for All scenario, this would need to rise to USD 8 billion annually between now and 2030 – requiring a cumulative investment of around USD 60 billion. Africa makes up around half of these investment needs, standing at almost USD 4 billion annually. Despite having the largest clean cooking budget shortfall, only 7% of the historic investments in clean cooking have flowed to Africa in the last 5 years.

Annnnual investments required in the Access for All scenario by 2030

The required investments in clean cooking through the rest of this decade will need to be split between stoves, accompanying equipment and supporting infrastructure to ensure continued delivery. Roughly 80% of the total investment goes into providing stoves and equipment. The remainder is designated for infrastructure, largely to serve LPG delivery with a smaller share for electricity. This does not account for the investments needed to build up clean cook stove supply chains. In some regions, repurposing closed refineries and ports can help alleviate this cost, as was the case in Kenya’s retired Mombasa refining facility. Grid reliability upgrades and capacity development to support electric cooking should happen alongside efforts for reaching universal access to electricity.

In rural areas, the cost-saving case for switching to modern fuels are more nuanced. For
those who gather solid biomass fuels, the switch to paid fuels is always perceived as an
increased cost, especially for households with little access to cash. However, daily fuel
gathering and traditional cooking carries important hidden costs in forgone time and risk
exposure. When accounting for these opportunity costs, even assuming low-paid work
available near rural communities, the effective cost of traditional use of biomass can be
higher than other modern energy cooking options.

Annualised total cost of cooking and up-front cost as a share of income for low-income household in sub-Saharan Africa, 2022

International support International support, particularly financing, will be essential to reach universal access to clean cooking this decade. The success of India, China, and Indonesia’s clean cooking progress comes from strong policy commitment and dedicated public funding. In turn, this attracted substantial private and state-backed capital to clean cooking. However, this model is not replicable in many countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. High debt burdens, constrained fiscal leeway for increasing public spending, and shallow domestic capital markets all signal the need for international participation to spur an increase in clean cooking investments. In the Access for All scenario, investments in cookstoves, consumer equipment, and infrastructure totals USD 8 billion annually through to 2030. Achieving universal access to clean cooking will depend heavily on the availability of sufficient concessional financing, a form of financing that offers far more generous terms than private investors or commercial capital markets. This type of financing comes in many forms but typically these are grantsthat do not need to be repaid, loans with very favourable rates of interest, or guarantees whereby a third party agrees to cover losses in case repayments cannot be made.

Carbon credits issued for cookstove-related projects, 2004-2023

Rules and market structures have been evolving lately to account for these challenges. The Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, setting the new rules for carbon credit mechanisms, incorporates corresponding adjustments mechanisms, and shall provide an increased focus on the quality and integrity of those credits. Regional initiatives, like the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI), should also help in enabling carbon markets to grow in developing economies, with the development of a regulatory environment. New models of financing clean cooking projects continue to emerge that can increasingly pull more private capital into clean cooking. For instance, carbon credits have been used to discount clean fuel costsinstead of stoves, as has been the case for bioethanol sales in Kenya. However, this should not serve as signal for international finance institutions to take a backseat role, but instead they can help find opportunities for commercial lenders to take their position in mature projects, freeing up capital to reallocate to more nascent projects.

Main country groupings

Advanced economies: OECD regional grouping and Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus1,2, Malta and Romania. Africa: North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa regional groupings. Asia Pacific: Southeast Asia regional grouping and Australia, Bangladesh, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), India, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China (China), Sri Lanka, Chinese Taipei, and other Asia Pacific countries and territories. Caspian: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Central and South America: Argentina, Plurinational State of Bolivia (Bolivia), Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Venezuela), and other Central and South American countries and territories.

Source:http://IEA