The usage of open fires and solid/semi-solid fuels for cooking is one of the world’s most pressing health and ecological problems, directly affecting close to 50% of the world’s population. Ineffective cooking and heating are a root cause of energy poverty, poor health, gender inequality and environmental degradation. It leads to more than 4 million premature deaths each year, making household air pollution the fourth biggest heath risk in the world, as well as a major contributor to ambient air pollution. The dearth of access to safe and clean cooking fuels also increases pressure on forests and habitats and leads to increased release of harmful pollutants that contribute to climate change.
It is well-known that usage of clean cooking-stoves and fuels could dramatically reduce fuel consumption and exposure to toxic emissions. In order to develop a flourishing universal market for clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels, we can transform the way the world cooks, enabling substantial, cross-cutting gains for sustainable development and save hundreds of lives in the process. There is no such thing as inefficient fuels , but rather there are inefficient cooking processes.
The domestic energy access remains a key area of focus for the G20 and that implementation is comprehensive and expeditious. In order to address energy deficiency, reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and advance the aims of the Paris Agreement, it is essential to scale clean cooking. As every nation at its capacity is working towards executing the SDGs and addressing environmental change, it is particularly important that we invest in scalable solutions at the household level that generate cross-cutting impacts.
List of recommendations for advancing progress that may be considered:
• Continue to prioritize the implementation of the G20 Energy Access Action Plan and SDG 7, ensuring that clean cooking is incorporated in both discussion and implementation.
• Developing nations can be hand held in establishing beneficial tax and tariff rates necessary to grow the market for clean and efficient cookstoves and fuels.
• Help ensure that financial mechanisms and programming to support energy access, economic development, health, women’s empowerment, and climate change mitigation and environmental protection efforts include provisions to support clean cooking.
The section of population with access to clean cooking fuels and technologies varies across countries, owing to various factors. At the domestic level, availability and affordability are both crucial. At a larger level, access is influenced by government policies, a nation’s economic status, as well as availability of resources.
In view of the complex interplay of forces that influence access to, and adoption of, clean fuels and technologies, no fuel or initiative taken by a particular country can be emphasized as a benchmark model for all others to emulate. The question of affordability must be addressed to sustain and increase the usage of clean cooking fuels and technologies.
The State-funded programmes, such as subsidies on clean cooking fuels and/or tailor-made technologies, have been among the initiatives taken by many countries. Nevertheless, more substantial state-led interventions are needed in countries where the majority of the population still lack access to clean cooking facilities.
In such nations, especially the low-income ones, investments in overall infrastructure associated with import, processing, supply and distribution of clean cooking fuels such as LPG are also required. Improved cook-stoves which meet WHO guidelines is one solution for the immediate future. Subsidies or low-interest loans could be provided to the poorer dwellings to facilitate the uptake of clean fuels.
Domestic cooking behaviour, the financial status of citizens, as well as current infrastructure need to be assessed before framing policies and programmes. The ideal scenario would be to provide clean fuels like LPG, natural gas and electricity for cooking to all, and households should continue to use these fuels through steady refills and payments of tariff. Nevertheless, such a scenario appears ambitious considering there are countries where more than 80% of the populace is yet to receive any form of clean cooking fuel or technology. For some regions mere subsidy on LPG leads to limited transition.
In the rural regions, focus should be given to technological innovation that aids the usage of available biomass to make clean fuel, alongside supplying fuels like LPG, natural gas or electricity. Few nations have combined policies promoting clean cooking fuels and technologies with others discouraging use of non-clean fuels for cooking. Policies and delivery models appropriate to local needs have to be developed.
Clean cooking must be prioritized as a critical cross-sectoral growth issue. Progressing towards the ambitious goal of universal access requires accelerated actions by all stakeholders. To develop a sustainable clean cooking market, we need to improve the overall eco-system by raising awareness, enhancing partnerships, harnessing synergies, and monitoring development with new data and tools. To have a concrete ecosystem requires that our efforts focus on the following, mutually-reinforcing elements that ripple across it:
• Clean cooking for all must be integrated into national policies and planning for energy, climate, and COVID-19 recovery.
• A dramatic scale-up in both public and private investments is needed to implement clean-cooking strategies and action plans to achieve on-the-ground results ensuring supply chains.
• Catalysts are needed to spur market innovations that can deliver affordable clean-cooking solutions at scale.
• Attaining development impacts requires adopting society-centered approaches aligned with both diver user needs and broader development objectives (e.g., climate, health, gender, jobs and sustainable livelihoods).
• The approaches adopted must ensure inclusiveness by addressing the needs of poor, vulnerable, fragile, and displaced populations, as well as engaging and empowering women across the clean-cooking value chains.
(https://www.orfonline.org/research/towards-universal-access-to-clean-cooking-fuels-and-technologies/)
As our world recovers from the crisis, clean cooking will be an important element for a low-carbon development trajectory, as well as the key to achieve climate and energy access goals. The G20 forum can be an arena to prioritize it and use the opportunities in recovery plans to marshal the necessary financing and multi-sectoral partnerships.
(Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of ICRIER)
