It is a damning indictment of the modern era that a vast majority of womenfolk are universally deprived of having access to clean cooking energy. However, access to clean cooking energy is deeply enshrined in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7). Although cooking with traditional fuels is not a new problem, it’s often overlooked.

The women of rural populations who still cook with polluting fuels and technologies, particularly from developing nations, face serious health, economic, environmental and climate impacts, making them vulnerable to energy poverty and hampering their ability to thrive.

This calls for urgent action and strong vigilance from policymakers to address the clean-cooking-energy-access disparity and inequality with the support of evidence-based interventions and initiatives to drive clean cooking energy transition, thereby achieving SDG 7 by 2030. It will make all the difference in domestic, environmental, and socio-economic development.

The International Energy Agency reported that 2.3 billion people worldwide — nearly one-third of the global population — still lack access to clean cooking energy and cook their meals over open fires or on basic stoves, breathing in harmful smoke released from burning coal, charcoal, firewood, agricultural wastes and animal dung. The lack of access to clean cooking contributes to 3.7 million premature deaths annually, with women and children most at risk.

The World Bank reported that about one-third of food fuels are harvested unsustainably, contributing to climate change and desertification. Cooking with such unsustainable wood fuels on inefficient stoves alone emits around one gigaton of CO2 per year, contributing to 2.6 per cent of global CO2 emissions.

The lack of access to clean cooking contributes to 3.7 million premature deaths annually, with women and children most at risk

In addition, reliance on polluting fuels and technologies involves a significant amount of cooking time and collecting and preparing fuel. Such laborious tasks prevent girls and women from getting an education, earning money, and joining community activities, thereby worsening gender inequality.

As a developing economy, Pakistan faces the same dilemma. As per available World Bank data for 2021, nearly half of the country’s population still lacks access to clean cooking fuels and technologies.

Another dimension of clean cooking energy is when consumers cannot afford it. According to the World Economic Forum’s June 2023 report on Fostering Effective Energy Transition, ‘’access to clean cooking fuels has slowed down in the past three years, and 100m people may go back to using traditional biomass for cooking’’ due to soaring energy prices and the rise in inflation worldwide.

If this trend continues and developing nations do not drive the clean cooking energy transition, collective net zero goals will be hard to achieve. Developing nations need large-scale international finance to accelerate the transition.

Clean cooking energy transition offers numerous benefits for the climate, gender equality, economic development, and beyond, making it the ideal solution. It avoids indoor air pollution, improves health, prevents deforestation, protects ecosystems, and saves time for girls and women for their education and income generation.

Moreover, it opens up new avenues for women’s economic empowerment, fostering entrepreneurship and employment opportunities, enabling them to challenge traditional gender norms and contribute to a more inclusive clean cooking energy industry.

Cooking with unsustainable wood fuels on inefficient stoves contributes to 2.6pc of global CO2 emissions

From this perspective, clean cooking must be a political, economic, and environmental priority, aided by policies, investment, and stakeholder engagement such as public-private partnerships.

In this regard, all the stakeholders, including the government, non-government organisations, donor agencies, private sector, academia, research institutes, and civil society, sit together to make concerted efforts to deliver clean cooking energy solutions and make them more accessible.

Research, development, investment, and awareness campaigns are key enablers for the advancement and widespread adoption of clean cooking solutions to accelerate the transition to clean cooking energy.

This transition demands financial mobilisation, fostering technology transfer and indigenous development to bring down the up-front cost to users, making modern energy cooking solutions more accessible.

However, access to finance to scale implementation for clean cooking projects has remained a leading barrier. In this regard, carbon financing is a key driver for attracting investment in the clean cooking industry.

Carbon markets can offer an important source of revenue for clean cooking projects. They can unlock further investments in the clean cooking industry and contribute to scaling up clean cooking ventures.

Though some initiatives have been taken in this regard, universal access to clean cooking energy leaves much to be desired. Thus, by addressing the clean cooking energy transition comprehensively and adopting sustainable and inclusive policies holistically, the country can pave the way for a just energy transition to address energy poverty, promote energy equity, and achieve environmental sustainability for a sustainable, equitable, green energy future.

The writer is a research scholar at MUET Jamshoro

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 18th, 2024