Agency tackles "most urgent energy challenge": clean cooking access

Axios

18-07-2025

The International Energy Agency is launching the next phase of its work to expand access to cleaner cooking in sub-Saharan Africa, where progress has been slower than in other regions.
Why it matters: Widespread use of polluting fuels like wood, charcoal and dung — and open fires or inadequate stoves — is a massive health and economic problem.
Lack of low-polluting cooking methods contributes to 815,000 premature deaths annually in Africa, IEA said in a new report.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright in January described access to clean cooking fuels as "the most urgent energy challenge on the planet today."
Threat level: "Women and girls pay the highest price, spending hours each day collecting firewood or other biomass, and breathing in harmful smoke that leads to serious long-term health impacts," IEA head Fatih Birol writes.
This also comes at the expense of education, the report notes.
Yes, but: It's a solvable problem with existing tech and fuels like liquid petroleum gas, advanced biomass cookstoves, and electrification.
IEA estimates that clean cooking access for every African household would take less than 0.1% of annual global energy investment over 15 years.
Driving the news: The report explores policies and infrastructure across Africa, where there's lots of action but more needed on finance and policy.
It's a very granular, country-specific look at the landscape and solutions needed — think stuff like LPG cylinder safety and tariff policies that avoid thwarting bioethanol while keeping duties on alcohol, to name just two.
IEA has a new policy and infrastructure roadmap to full access in Africa by 2040 that requires an estimated $37 billion in investment. It follows work like a 2024 summit that brought new financing pledges.
State of play: Diplomatic attention has already risen at recent Group of 7 and Group of 20 summits.
And a number of countries in Africa and elsewhere have made big gains and launched new efforts, with a suite of new policies of late.
Over the past five years, countries like Kenya and Nigeria are extending access to 2.7% of their population annually, IEA said.
But clean cooking nonetheless lacks the profile of some other energy topics.
The big picture: Daniel Wetzel, who heads IEA's sustainable transitions unit, notes it crosses global health, development, and energy agendas. "Because it's straddling these different pieces, sometimes it gets lost," he said in an interview.
"But ... from a solutions perspective, the energy industry is the key to unlocking it, and all the benefits are the ones that are accruing to women, to health, to emissions and ... greater prosperity," he said.
"How do you tie it together, how do you elevate it? This is where the IEA and Dr. Birol has really wanted to come in — using that convening power to move it up the agenda," he said.