President William Ruto of Kenya has called for COP31’s electrification agenda – a flagship initiative to expand the use of electricity to power the global economy – to include a push for electric cookers to replace polluting firewood and charcoal.
The Turkish and Australian co-hosts of the November summit want governments to sign up to a pledge to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 and 50% by 2050. It is currently around 23%.
“We should arrive at COP31 with clean cooking firmly embedded in that electrification and efficiency agenda,” Ruto said during an event on clean cooking organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the governments of Kenya, Norway and the US at the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.
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President William Ruto of Kenya has called for COP31’s electrification agenda – a flagship initiative to expand the use of electricity to power the global economy – to include a push for electric cookers to replace polluting firewood and charcoal.
The Turkish and Australian co-hosts of the November summit want governments to sign up to a pledge to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 and 50% by 2050. It is currently around 23%.
“We should arrive at COP31 with clean cooking firmly embedded in that electrification and efficiency agenda,” Ruto said during an event on clean cooking organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the governments of Kenya, Norway and the US at the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.
"The kitchen is where the energy transition enters daily lives for nearly one billion people," the Kenyan president said. He added that schools, hospitals and prisons - as well as homes - need to switch to clean cooking fuels.
COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment
Ruto said that - as well as the climate, health and gender equality benefits of clean cooking - electric cooking can make investment in electricity generation and networks more profitable and ensure households get more value from electricity connections.
LPG or electricity?
According to the IEA, about 6% of sub-Saharan African households - overwhelmingly in southern Africa - used electricity to cook in 2024 - while just under a fifth used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Despite being a fossil fuel and worse for indoor air quality than electric cookers, LPG is widely regarded as a clean-cooking fuel as the damage it does to the climate and to health is far less than the firewood and charcoal on which most sub-Saharan Africans rely.
A new IEA report on electrification found that electric cookstoves are 10% cheaper over their lifetimes than LPG stoves. But they are more expensive upfront so restricted access to finance holds back their adoption, as do power cuts, a lack of access to electricity and cultural preferences.
At the event in New York, some speakers promoted electric cookers while others stressed "technology neutrality", implying that LPG should be used where appropriate.
UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte was more in the former camp, saying that "clean cooking must be fit for the modern age of energy transitions and the age of electricity” and "genuinely clean and future-facing", adding that countries can "ride the trend of electrification" to roll out clean cooking.
As disruptions to oil and gas supply chains push up the cost of cooking gas, Kyte asked: “Why should households and governments be locked into solutions that are simply going to be a victim to fossil fuel and price volatility?”
Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said that renewable energy offers the best potential to achieve clean cooking because decentralised clean power can get to everywhere on the African continent.
Echoing Kyte, he added that “[renewables] detaches you from the volatility of fossil fuel that you see today, very often”, adding that it poses a very low level of risk compared with other energy systems and is one of the easiest ways of reducing emissions throughout the world.
But Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said country realities are different and so the pathways to achieving clean cooking will require varied combinations of LPG, electricity, bioenergy and other solutions.
Technology neutrality
With half of the about two billion people lacking access to clean cooking globally living in Africa, the African Union's commissioner for infrastructure and energy Lerato Mataboge said the continent prioritises "technology neutrality" and does not have a preference for electricity or LPG if either would help achieve clean cooking.
She said national circumstances of African countries must be respected, adding that the continent needs a range of affordable, reliable and safe cooking solutions as well as approaches that allow countries to select technologies that are "appropriate to their resources, infrastructure and household needs".
She added that financing decisions should not exclude viable solutions "solely because of the energy source from whence they come”. Whatever clean-cooking technology is used, she said that "affordability must extend beyond the purchase of a stove. We must ask if a household can afford the next cylinder refill or the next electricity payment."
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Dola Oluteye, senior fellow in energy and transport policy at the UCL Energy Institute, agreed, telling Climate Home News that - while electric cooking is viable in parts of Africa where reliable electricity, affordable appliances and suitable infrastructure already exist - those conditions remain out of reach for much of the continent.
She warned that making electric cooking the only measure of a clean cooking transition could slow progress in countries where other technologies offer a more immediate solution. “My concern is a purity trap,” Oluteye said.
She pointed to an IEA scenario forecasting that, with clean cooking rolled out quickly, over 60% of people gaining access to clean cooking in Africa from 2024 to 2040 would do so through LPG, compared with 17% through electricity. Bioethanol and biogas combined would account for 11% while advanced biomass cookstoves make up 10%.
“The intermediate solutions cannot be abandoned while the grid catches up,” she said, but added that if handled well, cooking could be "one of the best things that could happen to African electrification", providing the predictable demand that gives utilities a reason to invest in electricity networks and reliability.
Amina Mohammed, UN deputy secretary-general and former Nigerian environment minister, warned at the New York event against repeating the experience of programmes that supplied cooking technologies without adequately considering whether they actually worked for the women expected to use them.
Speaking after Birol, Ruto, US energy secretary Chris Wright and Norwegian international development minister Åsmund Aukrust, Mohammed joked that she was responding to "four men for whom this is a big women's problem".
After Birol noted that the IEA had been working on the issue for 25 years, Mohammed said the fact that the problem had not been solved in that time was "probably an indictment of the international community on what is supposed to be a huge problem for women and a billion of them".
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Facts Only
* President William Ruto called for COP31’s electrification agenda to include a push for electric cookers to replace firewood and charcoal.
* The Turkish and Australian co-hosts aim for governments to pledge to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 and 50% by 2050, up from the current 23%.
* LPG usage in sub-Saharan Africa was around one-fifth; electricity cooking usage in 2024 was about 6% in some households.
* Electric cookstoves are 10% cheaper over their lifetimes than LPG stoves but have higher upfront costs, facing barriers like finance access and power cuts.
* The IEA scenario suggests that between 2024 and 2040, the majority of clean cooking adoption in Africa would occur through LPG (60%) rather than electricity (17%).
* The African Union prioritizes "technology neutrality" for clean cooking solutions.
* Amina Mohammed warned against implementing cooking technologies without considering the needs of women users.
Executive Summary
President William Ruto called for the electrification agenda at COP31 to incorporate a focus on electric cookers as a means to replace polluting firewood and charcoal. The co-hosts of the November summit aim for governments to pledge to increase electricity's share in final energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 and 50% by 2050, up from the current 23%. This focus on clean cooking is framed as being embedded within the broader electrification and efficiency agenda.
The discussion highlighted the need for a transition to clean cooking fuels in homes, schools, hospitals, and prisons. While electric cooking is presented as potentially making electricity investment more profitable, adoption faces hurdles related to upfront costs, access to finance, power supply reliability, and cultural preferences. The debate also involved balancing the push for electrification with other solutions like LPG, bioenergy, and biomass, acknowledging that pathways will require varied combinations based on local realities.
Full Take
The framing of the energy transition presents a complex negotiation between global targets, technological feasibility, and localized socio-economic realities. The push for electrification, while framed as an expansion of economic opportunity, risks creating a "purity trap" if it mandates electric solutions without acknowledging existing infrastructure deficits or alternative pathways. The tension between promoting immediate access to clean cooking (like potentially LPG or biomass) and prioritizing grid-dependent electrification suggests a risk of imposing a specific technological solution rather than accommodating diverse development contexts.
The acknowledgment that decentralized clean power can drive demand for reliable electricity, thereby benefiting the entire energy system through grid investment, presents a potential bridge point between technology preference and infrastructure necessity. However, the IEA scenario showing reliance on LPG for rapid adoption in Africa contrasts with the stated goal of embedding clean cooking within the electrification agenda. This suggests a pattern where global efficiency goals might overlook the necessary intermediate solutions that respect existing access realities. The focus on financing—asking about affordability beyond the appliance itself—highlights the systemic gap between technical feasibility and actual implementation, suggesting that perceived technological neutrality can mask underlying disparities in resource distribution and governance.
What alternative pathways exist when a centralized electrification mandate conflicts with decentralized needs? How can global targets be structured to actively foster investment in infrastructure simultaneously with empowering local choices regarding immediate, context-appropriate energy access? If the focus is on ensuring affordability beyond the initial purchase, does this shift the conversation from technology choice to systemic financing and grid resilience?
Sentinel — Human
This text reads like standard, high-quality international reporting that synthesizes expert opinions and data to frame a complex energy transition debate, strongly suggesting human journalistic authorship.