For the first time, clean cooking took centre stage at the United Nations General Assembly on 22 September, as world leaders gathered to address one of the planet's most overlooked public health crises. The high-level event, convened by the International Energy Agency (IEA) alongside the governments of Norway and Kenya, aimed to reignite global efforts to replace the dirty fuels that kill an estimated 2.5 million people every year.
In sub-Saharan Africa, four out of five households still cook over open fires or on basic stoves, burning wood, charcoal, coal, kerosene, or agricultural waste. The resulting household air pollution is the second leading cause of premature death among women and children on the continent. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre stressed the urgency: "Nearly four in five households in Sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to clean cooking. Women bear the greatest burden, risking their health to provide a cooked meal for their family. Access to clean cooking has become a national development priority, and several countries in Africa are reporting rapid progress. Let us seize on this momentum to support investments at scale."
The IEA's executive director, Dr Fatih Birol, has long argued that this is a solvable problem. In a landmark 2023 report, he wrote: "The barriers to delivering on the promise of clean cooking for all are not technical." He added: "What is encouraging and disturbing, in equal measure, is that this huge environmental, economic and human challenge could be solved with relatively modest investment."
Why clean cooking matters for the climate
The issue is not just about health. Dirty cooking fuels entrench poverty, consume women's time, and contribute to climate change. Incomplete combustion of wood and charcoal in inefficient stoves releases methane and other greenhouse gases, while the harvesting of wood from forests degrades vital carbon sinks. The IEA estimates that a global transition to clean cooking—using liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), electric hot plates, or improved biomass stoves—could result in a net reduction of 1.5 gigatons of CO2 equivalent by 2030. That is roughly the same as the annual emissions from global aviation and shipping combined.
Dr Birol highlighted the climate co-benefit in 2024: "There is a real climate benefit here. I think this could play a very important role to keep the lungs of the world in Africa."
Progress and investment
Momentum has been building. The 2024 Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, hosted in Paris by the IEA and partners, drew 60 countries and mobilised more than $2.2 billion (€1.9 billion) in new financial commitments. Since then, over a third of that pledged funding has been deployed across 28 African countries, and more than 120 new clean cooking policies have been introduced. According to the IEA, the pace of people gaining access to clean cooking in Africa is now 30 per cent higher than the average over the past five years, despite disruptions to global energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Yet the scale of the challenge remains immense. The IEA estimates that just $4 billion (€3.7 billion) of annual investment is needed to ensure all African households have access to clean cooking technologies by 2030—a fraction of what is spent on other global priorities. "We can solve this problem in Africa," Dr Birol concluded.
Europe's role and self-interest
Dr Birol believes Europe has both a moral and a practical obligation to lead. "In addition to it being ethical, there are some other co-benefits for Europe," he said in 2024. If Europe does not step up, he warned, "other countries around the world who said they would do it with… maybe some other agendas" could fill the void. He also pointed to the link between energy poverty and migration: increasing Africa's social and economic prosperity would help address the root causes of irregular migration, saving money in the long run on managing instability.
This resonates with broader European concerns, from air pollution's deadly toll across the continent to the need for stable, cooperative international relations. The EU's own experience with reducing household emissions offers lessons that could be adapted for African contexts.
Cleaning up the carbon credit market
One significant source of funding for clean cooking projects is the cookstove carbon credits market, where companies and governments in industrialised countries buy offsets to finance projects in developing nations. However, this market has been plagued by integrity issues. A recent study found that cookstove projects overstate their climate benefits by an average of 1,000 per cent. Dan Wetzel, head of the IEA's tracking sustainable transitions unit, warned: "We don't want these very important credits that are essential to help solve this issue go the same way as large hydro credits in the past."
The Clean Cooking Alliance has been leading efforts to tighten methodologies, and new standards were set to be endorsed at the UN event. Dr Birol was clear about the IEA's stance: "Carbon credits are part of this solution, but it is not the main part. We are going to announce that we are only allowing the good quality of carbon credit schemes to be considered here because we know that there are some misuse of carbon credit schemes around the world."
As Europe grapples with its own energy transition and seeks to project influence globally, the clean cooking agenda offers a tangible way to make a difference. With modest investment and political will, a silent killer can be defeated—and Europe can play a decisive role.
