But the money pledged still falls short of the $4 billion a year needed for the rest of this decade to wean poor African households off traditional dirty fuels including charcoal, kerosene and firewood, while climate campaigners criticised efforts to switch them to fossil gas.

Countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and India have made progress in recent years, in line with a global goal to provide clean cooking for all by 2030. Yet four in five Africans still use highly polluting cooking methods – around half of the 2.3 billion people who lack clean options worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told the summit his organisation’s aim of making 2024 “a turning point” for clean cooking was being realised.

“It’s now or never,” he said, adding that the IEA will track the commitments made in Paris and share the results with the international community in a year’s time. “We will follow it as if it is our own money,” he emphasised.

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Separately, the African Development Bank (AfDB) confirmed an earlier pledge, first made at the COP28 climate summit last year, to mobilise around $2 billion for clean cooking over the next 10 years, earmarking 20 percent of its energy finance for that purpose.

Speaking in Paris, AfDB president, Akinwumi A. Adesina, said his own eyesight had been damaged by smoke from cooking fires during his childhood in Nigeria, while a friend and members of her family had died in an accident after she was sold petrol instead of kerosene as cooking fuel.

“Why do we let things like that happen?” Adesina asked, adding that enabling clean cooking is a matter of “human dignity, fairness and justice for women”. “It is about life itself,” he said.

Experts have long pointed to the health damage to women and children from carbon monoxide and black soot emitted by cooking over open fires or with basic stoves. Dirty cooking contributes to 3.7 million premature deaths annually, according to the IEA, with women and children most at risk from respiratory and cardiovascular ailments linked to indoor air pollution.

Ahead of the Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa this week in Paris, some climate and gender activists pointed to the small number of African women represented at the gathering – who they said accounted for less than a fifth of registered participants.

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Janet Milongo, coordinator of renewable energy for Climate Action Network International, said the event was biased “towards the continuation of the colonial, patriarchal representation of the continent”.

Speeches were made largely by male leaders of governments and companies, with the notable exception of Tanzania’s president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, and Damilola Ogunbiyi, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sustainable Energy for All.

Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (left) with the presidents of Sierra Leone, Tanzania and  Togo, the prime minister of Norway; H.E. Maroš Šefčovič, Executive Vice President of the European Green Deal and Akinwumi A. Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group at the Clean Cooking Summit for Africa in Paris, May 14, 2024 (Photo: International Energy Agency)

Clean cooking ‘opportunity’ in NDCs

Ogunbiyi, who is Nigerian and has worked on clean energy policy for the government, said her country had made a big effort on solar electrification but had forgotten about clean cooking.

“We can’t make that mistake again,” she said, calling for clean cooking to be a key part of African governments’ investment plans for their energy transition.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell urged more governments to seize the opportunity to include measures to boost clean cooking in the next updates to their national climate action plans (NDCs) due by early next year.

As of December last year, only 60 NDCs included one or more measures that explicitly target clean cooking, such as Nepal’s goal to ensure that by 2030 half of households use electric stoves as their main mode of cooking and Rwanda promising to disseminate modern efficient cookstoves to 80% of its rural population and 50% of people in cities by that date.

Stiell noted that planet-heating emissions from dirty cooking methods are “significant”, amounting to about 2% of the global total – the equivalent of emissions from the aviation and shipping sectors combined.

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He said the world has the technology to shift people onto modern, cleaner sources of energy and cut emissions in the process, calling it “low-hanging fruit”.

Dymphna van der Lans, CEO of the Clean Cooking Alliance, a global partnership of organisations working on the issue, said it was important to raise awareness not just about the scale of the problem – but to ensure people understand it is an issue that can be solved.

“The technologies exist – they are out there, there are fantastic companies providing these fuels and solutions and services to these customers that actually can be deployed immediately… and reach the populations in Africa,” she told Climate Home after the summit.

LPG conundrum

On stage in Paris, companies ranging from fossil fuel giants such as Total and Shell to smaller manufacturers of cookstoves said they would expand their efforts to reach new customers with more efficient stoves running on modern energy, including liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), bioethanol and electricity.

While there is widespread consensus over ending the use of firewood and charcoal – which contribute to deforestation – there is less agreement over which fuels should replace them.

Efforts to build new distribution networks for LPG – a form of fossil fuel gas – are particularly controversial. At the summit on Tuesday, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné said his company wants to increase its 40 million African LPG customers to 100 million and will invest more to boost its LPG production capacity in East Africa.

Pouyanné said there is a need to make LPG cooking affordable – noting that the $30 upfront investment required for a stove and gas canister is too high for most people – which could be done through “pay as you cook” loans.

Some international development agencies that work on the ground to help poor households access clean cooking – including Practical Action – support the use of LPG as a “transitional step” towards clean cooking where options like electricity or ethanol are not available.

“Our primary objective is to ensure people, especially women and children, have access to the best possible solutions which don’t compromise their health and that in the long term aren’t contributing to the worsening climate crisis,” said Practical Action CEO Sarah Roberts.

In the IEA’s “least-cost, realistic scenario” to reach universal clean cooking this decade, LPG remains the primary solution, representing nearly half of households gaining access, while electric cooking is the main option for just one in eight homes.

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The IEA’s analysis shows that this strategy, centred on LPG, would drive up emissions by 0.1 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2030. But that would be more than offset by reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from switching away from firewood, charcoal and inefficient stoves, resulting in a net reduction of 1.5Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2030.

Net greenhouse gas emissions annual savings from clean cooking access in the IEA Access for All scenario by 2030 (in Mt CO2-eq) (Source: IEA)

Red = Combustion; Orange = Avoided combustion; Yellow = Unsustainable harvesting; Green = Net savings          

At the summit, Togo’s president Faure Gnassingbé described LPG as “really the way forward” for clean cooking, and said more production capacity was needed in Africa. He added that ESG investors – which normally apply green and ethical standards – should adjust their environmental criteria so they can back LPG cooking projects despite it being a fossil fuel.

“We should be clear-headed and not open up to sterile debates on this issue,” Gnassingbé told the summit.

Some climate justice activists disagreed, criticising high-level backing for fossil gas as a clean cooking solution.

Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a Nairobi-based energy and climate think-tank, said on social media platform X that the need for clean cooking alternatives “is used by many African politicians as an excuse for building gas infrastructure” which is intended to develop an export industry and never reaches poorer households.

Here’s my response to yesterday’s summit on Clean Cooking in Africa & the declaration issued by #IEA.

“This declaration is a lazy & misguided statement which seems to rely on the private sector to use gas as a solution to this problem.

However, there’s no evidence that will…

— Mohamed Adow (@mohadow) May 15, 2024

He said the money raised at the summit should be channelled instead into high-efficiency, low-cost electric cookers for African women, which could be powered by renewable energy.

Carbon finance principles

Another controversial way of promoting clean cooking, backed by the IEA-hosted summit, is by developing and selling carbon credits for the emissions savings from new technologies and fuels.

The IEA said that around 15% of the total amount pledged in Paris would come via carbon finance, with the proceeds from selling offsets helping subsidise customers’ access to clean cooking.

But Climate Home found in an investigation last year that the methodologies used to calculate emissions reductions from more efficient cookstoves in India had overstated their greenhouse gas savings.

To counter such problems, the Clean Cooking Alliance announced a new set of “Principles for Responsible Carbon Finance in Clean Cooking” in Paris, backed by 100 organisations working in the space.

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The voluntary principles, which aim to build confidence in carbon markets for clean cooking, say project claims should be evidence-based, case-specific and substantiated, and their benefits should be transparent. The alliance is also working with the UN climate secretariat on a new methodology for clean cooking carbon credits which it hopes will be ready this year.

Van der Lans said the goal was to strengthen the quality and integrity of clean-cooking carbon credits in line with the latest science, to achieve a higher, fairer price that fully reflects the work being done to protect forests by moving away from charcoal and firewood.

“Everybody within the clean cooking ecosystem is signing up to these principles,” she noted – from banks to carbon credit verification agencies and companies selling the technology.

“That is a good signal that we’re doing the right things and we’re moving this market in the right direction,” she added.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Joe Lo)

The post Paris summit unlocks cash for clean cooking in Africa, side-stepping concerns over gas appeared first on Climate Home News.

Amina Junaid Sani, Green manager with SME Funds, says a biofuel gel produced from sawdust, grass and waste paper is a more effective alternative to kerosene, which is increasingly difficult to get hold of.

Some estimates record that over 90% of Nigerians use kerosene for cooking, which has experienced huge price fluctuations in the past year.

Cookstoves are a growing source of CO2 emissions around the world, but do not receive the same attention as other sources of pollution, such as power stations, aviation and transport.

The smoke produced from dirtier traditional stoves, generates many harmful pollutants as well as more greenhouse gases. 93,500 deaths a year are linked to its use.

“This is selling a dollar per litre, so it is affordable for [them], when you take it to local women in the villages you know what they are going through. It’s hard to get kerosene and people are keen to use this”.

The post Could biofuel stoves cut carbon and fuel costs in Nigeria? appeared first on Climate Home News.

A women prepares dung patties for a small scale biogas project in India. (Source: UN/Ray Witlin)

With 2012 designated the year of Sustainable Energy for All by the United Nations and the issue high on the agenda at the Rio+20 summit in June, what exactly is sustainable energy and how can it help developing countries?

The immediate image it may conjure in the developed world is much the same as renewable energy. The two are not interchangeable however.

Technologies that work elsewhere, cannot be transplanted into the developing world and expected to function the same.

“I think it is really important to define what we mean by sustainable energy,” says Pascoe Sabido, sustainable energy advisor, Friends of the Earth Europe.

“It should not negatively impact the broader environment or people’s local environments that they depend on for their livelihoods. It shouldn’t impact people socially, in terms of human rights and health impacts either.

“[Without a clear definition] we’re going to see destructive technologies like large-scale industrial biofuels and big dams moving people off their land and destroying local ecosystems,” warns Sabido.

There have been instances in Central America of land clearances to make space for huge energy crop plantations. These have led, in some cases, to violent clashes including one incident in Guatemala that saw three people killed.

Sabido says that the definition of sustainable energy also rules out technologies that could contribute toward dangerous levels of climate change, such as coal.

It’s not all about large-scale electricity generation however.

Projects that replace kerosene lighting with solar technologies and replace indoor wood and coal fires with efficient cookstoves can provide added benefits.

These can both save money for the user while reducing wood burning can help save the time taken to gather it and helps provide marginal vegetation with a better chance of developing. The health benefits are perhaps the most tangible however.

“Deaths from smoke-related diseases, from people burning wood and dung, indoors kill more people than malaria, more than HIV/AIDS and more than TB,” says Sabido.

Corruption

Identifying the right kind of projects is only half the battle however.

“If energy access is to be achieved in these countries the whole process must be transparent,” says Geoffrey Kamese, Programme Officer, National Association of Professional Environmentalists, Uganda (NAPE).

“When you invest a lot of money in a project, at the end of the day, corrupt leaders, corrupt companies end up taking out most of this money. It does not end up benefitting the communities for whom it was intended. If we are to overcome that kind of shortcoming the processes must be transparent.”

AUDIO: NAPE Uganda’s Geoffrey Kamese on the threat of corruption to sustainable energy projects…

Kamese says that large, centralised projects such as new power stations to feed a national grid are more susceptible to corruption than others.

“Development in Africa has been decided by the politicians. They want to leave a legacy behind, some big investment that they will be remembered for. Yet, these big, big investments do not benefit small, rural communities.”

Progress at Rio

Using alternative fuel sources such as biomass pellets and using efficient burners has environmental, health and economic benefits. (Source: UN/Sophia Paris)

So what does Kamese hope to see from Rio+20.

“When we are going to develop projects that benefit our people, they must be able to participate. When we talk about participation nowadays it is only participation in quotation marks,” says Kamese.

“We need communities to discuss their own problems and come up with solutions that informs the decision making,” says Kamese. “We want meaningful participation at Rio. Let the people generate the ideas.”

While the expectations of Rio+20 are routinely talked up, Kamese warns of the dangers of pushing for tangible, concrete results at the summit.

“If we go to Rio to make targets they will not have come from the people, they will have come from “the cream”. Firm decisions at Rio would come from a specific [elite] group of people, not the people they represent.”

The role of business

Funding the sustainable energy agenda is another issue that will have to be tackled at Rio+20.

While Kamese is correct that limiting corruption will help offer good value for investment, attracting that funding must come first.

Nick Main, Global Leader of Sustainability and Climate Change with the consultancy firm Deloitte, says sustainability has become an integrated part of the business landscape.

“The term tends to have a green tinge to it but now it is much broader than that,” he says.

“This is about business resilience, the ability to continue in the future and it’s not purely about business. It’s not just about environmental sustainability, it’s about resource efficiency.

“It’s also about the social impacts too. People realise that you can’t have a sustainable business in a community that isn’t flourishing.”

AUDIO: What do the terms sustainability and resilience mean to the business community? Deloitte’s Nick Main tells RTCC’s Ed King…

The post What is sustainable energy? appeared first on Climate Home News.

This week Ugochi Anyaka examines whether paper briquette project should be included in the CDM.

Around 60 million Nigerians still rely on firewood for their cooking.

Meanwhile, tonnes of paper used in the country everyday ends up in landfill because of the lack of suitable recycling systems.

One project aims to solve both solutions using small scale production of paper briquettes – flammable blocks of paper.

The project aims not only to reduce the reliance on firewood – in turn reducing deforestation – but also helps people in the local communities learn skills and develop businesses.

In the fifth of a series of UNFCCC CDM Radio Club reports RTCC is hosting, Ugochi Anyaka from Aso Radio in Nigeria debates whether this type of project could and should be approved under the Clean Development Mechanism.

The story won the third prize in the 2011 UNFCCC/CDM African Radio Contest.

The radio club aims to spread the word about the CDM in Africa and extend the benefits of the mechanism to communities that have not yet benefited from the scheme.

The post PODCAST: Fuelling the fire with waste paper in Nigeria appeared first on Climate Home News.