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Access to clean cooking services in energy and emission scenarios after COVID-19

Nature Energy volume 6, pages 1067–1076 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Slow progress in expanding clean cooking access is hindering progress on health, gender, equity, climate and air quality goals globally. Despite a rising population share with clean cooking access, the number of cooking poor remains stagnant. In this study we explored clean cooking access until 2050 under three reference scenarios, a COVID-19 recovery scenario and ambitious climate mitigation policy scenarios. Our analysis shows that universal access may not be achieved even in 2050. A protracted recession after the pandemic could leave an additional 470 million people unable to afford clean cooking services in 2030 relative to a reference scenario, with populations in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia the worst affected. Ambitious climate mitigation needs to be twinned with robust energy access policies to prevent an additional 200 million people being unable to transition to clean cooking in 2030. Our findings underline the need for immediate acceleration in efforts to make clean cooking accessible and affordable to all.

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Fig. 1: Cooking poor populations.
Fig. 2: Total and average cooking energy demand.
Fig. 3: Total cooking energy mix in 2030 for rural populations.
Fig. 4: Total cooking energy mix in 2030 for urban populations.
Fig. 5: Relationship between income poor and cooking poor populations by region and scenario.

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Data availability

Links to the micro datasets that were used in the analysis are included in the Supplementary Information, when available. Given that some of these datasets are not publicly available, the data used for the estimation module is only available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The simulated datasets generated during the current study are also available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. All estimated moments, scenario assumptions and the datasets underlying the plots are available in the Supplementary Data file.

Code availability

The codes used during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

M.P.-C. received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 821124 (NAVIGATE). This work was partially funded by the contributions of the National Member Organizations of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy, Climate, and Environment Program, International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Shonali Pachauri, Miguel Poblete-Cazenave & Matthew J. Gidden

  2. Population and Just Societies Program, International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Arda Aktas

  3. Climate Analytics, Berlin, Germany

    Matthew J. Gidden

Authors
  1. Shonali Pachauri
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  2. Miguel Poblete-Cazenave
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Contributions

S.P. and M.P.-C. conceived the initial framework. S.P. and M.P.-C. designed the research. M.P.-C., A.A. and M.J.G. prepared the data. M.P.-C. and A.A. performed the modelling, wrote the codes and carried out the analysis. S.P. and M.P.-C. led the writing of the paper with all other authors contributing to the writing, revisions and editing.

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Correspondence to Shonali Pachauri.

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Peer review information Nature Energy thanks Joshua Rosenthal, Francis Johnson and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Pachauri, S., Poblete-Cazenave, M., Aktas, A. et al. Access to clean cooking services in energy and emission scenarios after COVID-19. Nat Energy 6, 1067–1076 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00911-9

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