From “Two Birds” to “Two Loops”: Why Electric Cooking Could Reinvent Energy Systems

By Dr Simon Batchelor (OBE), Prof Matthew Leach, Prof Ed Brown, Dr John Leary

For years, clean cooking was treated as a health issue, an environmental issue, or at best a household welfare issue. Electricity planners focused on grids, connections, transformers, and generation. Cooking sat somewhere else, often in a different ministry, a different funding stream, and a different conversation entirely.

That separation is beginning to break down.

A new paper by Simon Batchelor, Matthew Leach, Jon Leary and Ed Brown (Pre-print available) argues that electric cooking is no longer simply about replacing charcoal or LPG with electricity. Increasingly, it is becoming something much bigger: a driver of stronger, more financially viable energy systems.

The paper traces a journey that began with the 2019 paper Two Birds, One Stone, which argued that cooking should be treated as part of energy planning, not as a side issue. At the time, this was still a provocative idea. Many energy planners assumed cooking would overload fragile grids and mini-grids. Electric cooking was often viewed as unrealistic for low-income countries.

But evidence from the last five years has changed the debate.

Across Africa and Asia, pilots, utility studies, and mini-grid experiences are showing that electric cooking can actually improve energy system economics if designed properly. Efficient appliances such as electric pressure cookers use far less power than many expected. More importantly, cooking creates something utilities desperately need: regular and meaningful electricity demand.

That matters because one of the biggest hidden problems in electricity access is not connections, but underuse.

Many households now have some form of electricity connection, yet consume very little electricity. From the perspective of utilities and mini-grid operators, this creates a difficult business model. Infrastructure is built, but revenue remains weak because consumption stays low.

Cooking changes that equation.

Unlike televisions or entertainment devices, cooking is not discretionary. People cook every day. When cooking shifts onto electricity, energy use rises substantially and predictably. That means more electricity sold, better use of infrastructure, and improved financial sustainability for operators. The paper describes this as a shift “from load problem to revenue engine.”

The authors describe this through what they call the first reinforcing loop.

More electric cooking leads to higher electricity consumption. Higher consumption improves utility revenues and load factors (assuming a tariff set for decent cost recovery). Improved revenues justify investment in better systems and reliability. Better reliability then encourages even more households and institutions to cook with electricity.

In other words, cooking demand may help finance stronger energy systems.

Importantly, the paper argues that this is not only about households. Commercial and institutional cooking may be just as important.

Street food vendors, restaurants, schools, and hospitals often cook during daytime hours. That creates demand profiles that align surprisingly well with solar generation. Instead of electricity systems struggling with low daytime demand and sharp evening peaks, cooking can help flatten and diversify demand curves.

This becomes especially important for mini-grids.

Mini-grids have often been designed around the assumption that rural households will use only tiny amounts of electricity. The result is systems that are technically functional but financially fragile. The paper argues that cooking demand can help transform mini-grids from barely viable systems into economically stronger ones, but only if they are designed with cooking in mind from the outset.

That means thinking differently about planning.

One of the paper’s strongest arguments is that cooking demand is still largely missing from national energy models and electrification planning. Systems are frequently designed around low-consumption assumptions that ignore the enormous amount of energy households already use for cooking through charcoal, firewood, or LPG.

The authors call this a “planning blind spot.”

If cooking were included properly in demand forecasting, many energy systems might be built differently, with different sizing, storage strategies, tariffs, and investment decisions.

Alongside the electricity revenue loop, the paper identifies a second reinforcing loop: carbon finance.

Traditional clean cooking carbon projects have long struggled with credibility concerns, especially around estimating how much biomass is actually displaced. Electric cooking changes this because electricity use can increasingly be measured directly through smart meters and connected appliances.

This opens the possibility of higher-integrity carbon credits based on measured energy use rather than uncertain assumptions.

The implications are potentially significant. Carbon revenues could subsidise appliance costs, reduce tariffs, or support pay-as-you-cook financing models. In effect, carbon finance could help make electric cooking cheaper for households, accelerating adoption while also strengthening electricity systems.

Together, these become the paper’s “two loops”:

• an electricity revenue loop that strengthens utilities and mini-grids;
• and a carbon finance loop that improves affordability and adoption.

However, the paper is careful not to present electric cooking as a silver bullet.

The road is not smooth and the challenges remain substantial. Reliability of the electricity supply still matters, as does the quality of the supply.  Households continue to “fuel stack,” using multiple fuels together rather than fully switching – which can affect the health and environment benefits. Appliance upfront affordability remains an issue and needs micro finance institutions to consider lending for cooking appliances. Tariff structures can either encourage or discourage cooking adoption. Carbon markets remain uncertain and politically contested.

We do acknowledge that much of the evidence still comes from pilots and early-stage programmes. The transition is not guaranteed, although the future looks electric.

The broader message is difficult to ignore.

For decades, electrification was often planned around minimal consumption: a few lights, phone charging, perhaps a television. But real economic growth and progress requires deeper energy use. Cooking may turn out to be one of the most important pathways for moving electricity systems from fragile access platforms into economically sustainable infrastructure.

The original “Two Birds” argument was that electrification and clean cooking could support each other.

The new argument is even more ambitious.

Electric cooking may not simply benefit from stronger energy systems. It may help create them.

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Featured Image: AI generated image from prompt by S Batchelor.

Ai Disclaimer: Human led draft, AI used to tighten paragraphs.