Scaling Up and Integrating Clean Cooking into Energy Transition
Across the world, daily meals are prepared over open fires or stoves fueled by wood, charcoal, or dung. For many communities, these fuels are free or inexpensive, but their hidden costs are enormous. Cooking with biomass fills homes with smoke, damages eyes, causes respiratory illnesses, and is especially dangerous for children. In fact, household air pollution was responsible for an estimated 3.2 million deaths per year in 2020, including over 237 000 deaths of children under the age of 5.1
The climate impacts are just as severe. Household cooking emits about the same amount of carbon dioxide as the global aviation industry and accounts for nearly half of all global anthropogenic black carbon emissions. In short, what people use to cook their food directly shapes public health, climate change, and development outcomes.
Beyond Biomass
For decades, solutions focused on improving biomass stoves: adding insulation, modifying their design, or attaching chimneys. These efforts helped, but they did not fundamentally shift communities away from polluting fuels. Tiered efficiency ratings—from the most basic three-stone fire to higher-performing stoves—still left millions reliant on biomass.
The Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) is supporting governments in aligning clean cooking with a just energy transition. As countries expand national electricity grids and promote new energy access, clean cooking needs to be built in from the start.
Opportunities at the Energy–Development Nexus
Integrating clean cooking into electrification strategies offers enormous opportunities. In countries like Tanzania and Uganda, Ministries of Energy are now committing to raise the proportion of clean cooking in their national energy mix. This means they are setting concrete goals and policies to replace traditional biomass fuels like firewood and charcoal with cleaner alternatives, like induction stoves and electric rice-cookers. By aligning utility companies, private sector, governments, and communities, the shift becomes more practical and affordable:
- Tariff innovation: Uganda is piloting electricity tariffs specifically for cooking, reducing household costs and encouraging uptake.
- Institutional users: The World Food Programme reports an additional 20 million African children are now fed through national school meals programmes – with notable progress in Kenya, Madagascar, Ethiopia, and Rwanda. Transitioning schools to cleaner fuels can generate wide-reaching health and climate benefits. Transitioning schools to cleaner fuels can generate wide-reaching health and climate benefits.
- Consumer access: New financing models, such as on-bill repayment and pay-as-you-go programs, are lowering the upfront cost of clean cooking appliances.
Country Spotlight: Uganda
Uganda has established a dedicated Clean Cooking Unit within the Ministry of Energy, reflecting growing political commitment. Around 64% of Ugandans rely on dirty fuels, meanwhile only 25.7% have access to electricity. With the government targeting 80% electricity access by 2030, there is an opportunity to integrate clean cooking efforts into the broader electrification agenda.
By piloting affordable electricity tariffs for cooking, promoting results-based subsidies to cut technology costs by half, and engaging schools, religious leaders, and local councils, Uganda is laying the groundwork for widespread adoption. Early results show that households switching from charcoal to electric cooking often discover they save money compared to what they were spending on charcoal.
Country Spotlight: Raising Awareness in Eswatini
In Eswatini, Ntjilo-Ntjilo Arts Network is harnessing creativity and culture as tools for change, recognizing that adopting e-cooking requires not just access, but also convincing people of its benefits.
The Network started by conducting community surveys across eight locations, which went on to guide their programming. The team then worked with artists to create songs and poems that spotlight the dangers of cooking with firewood and the advantages of cleaner alternatives. The surveys also revealed the barriers households face in switching to clean cooking, enabling the programme to target solutions where they are needed most.
Looking Ahead
To continue furthering the proliferation of clean cooking technologies worldwide, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition supports the project, Accelerating E-Cooking Uptake in Africa and South Asia, to embed electric cooking solutions into broader energy and clean air programmes and work closely with the World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMP) to make e-cooking a standard part of national energy planning.
Furthermore, the CCAC also launched a $2 million Challenge Programme to accelerate e-cooking uptake across Africa, supporting innovative solutions that can reach communities at scale. These combined efforts mark a shift: clean cooking is moving from a long-standing challenge to a central component of energy access, public health, and climate strategies.
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