At COP30, Global Platform Launches to Accelerate Clean Cooking in Schools Worldwide
Belém, Brazil – 16 November 2025 – The Platform for Clean Cooking in Schools was launched at COP30 as a key part of the COP30 Presidency’s Action Agenda. This Plan to Accelerate Solutions for Clean Cooking in Schools (PAS) – links energy and food system transitions globally. The Platform brings ambition and planning with policy and finance to deliver impact – creating conditions to mobilise support across the board to accelerate a clean cooking transition in schools. This Platform supports the School Meals Coalition and its goals – a global alliance of governments and partners working to ensure every child has access to school meals that are healthy and nutritious – while strengthening the role of schools as catalysts for community-wide energy transitions.
The platform brings together partners led by Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) together with the World Food Programme (WFP), the School Meals Coalition, UKAid – Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) Programme, the Government of Iceland, the Middle East Green Initiative – Forward7, Global Platform for Action (GPA) and Lightrock.
With schools serving meals to more than 450 million children daily, they are the second-largest consumers of biomass energy after households. In many low- and middle-income countries, particularly across sub-Saharan Africa, traditional cooking methods still rely heavily on traditional fuels such as firewood or charcoal on open fires and traditional stoves, exposing students and staff to harmful smoke and negative health impacts – while driving deforestation and contributing to the climate crisis.
At a time when 2.1 billion people still lack access to clean cooking, leading to 3.2 million premature deaths each year, clean cooking in schools offers a transformative solution – linking food and energy systems as a scalable solution to deliver nutritious school meals powered by sustainable energy solutions for every child. The Platform will serve as a flagship initiative to bring together governments, financiers and delivery partners to mobilize resources, scale innovation and align policies that accelerate clean cooking in schools.
Clean cooking in schools directly contributes to COP30 Action Agenda, under the axis, Transitioning Energy, Industry, and Transport, with the key objective for universal access to energy. From Belém, the PAS will move quickly into implementation – building on actions underway in 10 countries, with the aim to scale to another 10 countries by 2026, reaching global scale by 2030.
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Source-SEforALL