MECS to highlight urgency for scaling clean, electric cooking at United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week NYC

By Jose Luis Ortega Moreno (Loughborough University).
From 21st – 26th September 2025, the UK aid (FCDO) funded Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme will be speaking and participating in side events of the United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week NYC.

On Sunday 21st September, as part of the Global Africa Business Initiative’s (GABI) event Unstoppable Africa, MECS Director Ed Brown will speak as a panellist in the session ‘Transforming Clean Cooking: Addressing Energy Poverty and Empowering Communities’, co-hosted by Forward7 and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL). The panel session will take place at 12:30 – 14:00 New York time, and Professor Ed Brown will be making a number of announcements about new and exciting commitments to the electric cooking sector.

On Monday 22nd September, at 12:30 – 14:00 New York time, Professor Ed Brown will also speak at the event Empowering the Path to a Just and Equitable Transition with Sustainable Energy for All, a side event of the United Nations General Assembly hosted by SEforAll and the Permanent Mission of Iceland to the United Nations.

Professor Ed Brown will speak at the panel event United for Clean Cooking – A Joint UN Effort: Transforming Energy Systems to Protect Health and Advance Sustainable Development, as part of the SDG7 Action Forum, on the Wednesday 24th September, organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the World Bank, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The session will take place from 11:00 – 12:45 local time, and MECS will talk about their latest work on black carbon.

On Thursday 25th September, 14:30 – 16:00, MECS will be part of the panel Toward Gender Transformative Action on Super Pollutants, a New York Climate Week event co-organised by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and Oxfam. Professor Ed Brown will be speaking on the relationship between cooking, super pollutants, and gender.

Professor Ed Brown and Jose Luis Ortega will also be representing MECS at the event UN-Energy Plan of Action Towards 2030: The Role of UN-Energy in Achieving Universal Energy Access and Accelerating Energy Transition on Friday 26th September.

Throughout the week, MECS aims to highlight the importance of scaling access to clean, electric cooking to drive progress towards Paris Agreement terms, reinforce the positive health impacts of electric cooking, create sustainable demand for electrification projects, and ensure that no-one is left behind in the global clean energy transition.