In the pursuit of sustainable development and climate resilience, off-grid solar electric cooking (e-cooking) technologies is a dual solution encompassing both climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies.
Globally, cooking with biomass amounts for as much as 2% of CO2 emissions. Given the rapid advances and price reductions in solar e-cooking technologies, there is an opportunity to scale these solutions to help close the emissions gap and deliver a range of co-benefits in support of numerous Sustainable Development Goals.
However, barriers to uptake remain and so a range of supply and demand-side interventions are needed to overcome these, to enable the provision of affordable financing for households to purchase solar e-cooking systems.
This report underscores the significance of energy for cooking as a pivotal climate issue, in addition to being a critical concern for economic development, health, gender equality, and the local environment in low-income countries.
The challenge is acute across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where population growth is driving up total greenhouse gas emissions. While per-capita emissions remain far lower across SSA compared to most other regions, energy for cooking accounts for the largest share of household emissions, especially in rural areas.
Reflecting this challenge, clean cooking targets feature prominently in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) across Africa, including some explicit targets for e-cooking. However, there are opportunities to highlight this further in revised NDCs and include a broader range of existing e-cooking technologies.
In essence, this report serves as a call to action, identifying specific needs and opportunities for both demand and supply-side market activation for solar e-cooking technologies, as a linchpin of climate resilience and sustainable development at the last mile, in the global south.
This report is published in collaboration with the World Food Programme with contributions from UNITAR-GPA, the Clean Cooking Alliance, Last Mile Climate, the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, IRENA, Modern Energy Cooking Services, and SEforAll.
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