How clean cooking has ‘moved to the top of the energy agenda’

In Africa today, four-out-of-five people continue to cook their meals over open fires. Globally, around 2.3 billion people are burning charcoal, wood, animal dung or other polluting fuels to cook their food, with dire impacts on health, gender equality and the environment. Yet clean cooking’s prospects are better than ever, as governments and companies see the economic as well as human potential.

Pollution from burning dirty fuels for cooking contributes to 3.7 million premature deaths annually, with women and children the most vulnerable. The process of cooking on an open fire – which involves collecting fuel like firewood and keeping the fire alight throughout the day – prevents women and girls from accessing education, earning a wage or doing other work that could lead to financial autonomy. Indeed, households without clean cooking spend an average of five hours per day collecting fuel and cooking, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), while demand for firewood and charcoal means that an area the size of Ireland is deforested each year.

“When I was a child in my grandmother’s house, I remember that this was how she cooked, and there was literally just smoke pouring out at you in all directions,” explains Ranil Dissanayake, a senior research fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGDev). Modern solutions, Dissanayake adds, include electric stoves that might rely on solar panels on the roof, or using cleaner-burning solid, liquid or gaseous fuels.

“Traditionally, though, policy has been lacklustre at rolling out new technology, and it has proved hard to change people’s behaviour in a way that involves investing in a stove that has a high upfront cost,” says Dissanayake.

Clean cookstoves at the top of the agenda

The global policy landscape around clean cooking has changed considerably in the past year, however.

                                                        Source:Energy Monitor

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