MECS awarded £44 million, five-year funding extension by UK Government to boost access to clean, electric cooking worldwide, announced at COP29

The Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme has been awarded a five-year, £44 million funding extension by the UK Government. The funding extension forms part of a major £74 million package to boost global access to clean cooking, as announced today by the UK Minister for Development Anneliese Dodds at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

MECS is a UK aid funded research and innovation programme, led by Loughborough University and in partnership with the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), which aims to accelerate the transition to modern energy cooking services on a global scale, with the evidence base pointing to the viability, cost effectiveness, and user satisfaction that energy efficient electric cooking devices provide. The funding will draw in CLASP as a core partner, to bring in their broader expertise in energy efficiency. Since starting in 2018, MECS has improved access to clean energy for over 3.8 million people who have adopted cleaner and more efficient cooking equipment and practices, reducing their fuel consumption and improving air quality and family income. This includes supporting 273 social institutions, including schools, to transition to modern cooking. The extension will continue UK aid funding for the programme up to December 2030 to align with the target of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Globally, around 2.1 billion people use polluting biomass fuels to cook, and the associated burden of these traditional cooking practices falls predominantly to women, causing multiple detrimental impacts in terms of health, gender equality, climate and deforestation. The funding package of £74 million, including the ongoing work in the Ayrton Fund, £16m investment by BII, and innovative programmes on agriculture and climate change mitigation will extend clean cooking access to an additional 10 million people in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Indo-Pacific, shifting reliance from polluting biomass to clean cooking fuels, such as electricity.  

Dr. Simon Batchelor OBE, Research Coordinator, MECS, commented:

“This package not only enables our work at MECS on energy efficient modern cooking to continue, but it’s designed to expand and explore new innovative approaches in creating affordable options for all, to ensure modern energy cooking services are increasingly based on renewable energy, and to use carbon and other finance mechanisms to accelerate scaled uptake.  The team are excited to engage to this global challenge and contribute alongside our many partners.”  

The UK Minister for Development Anneliese Dodds said:

“This package will support 10 million people across Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Indo-Pacific to leave coal and wood cooking behind, helping the environment while also improving the health of women and girls who are so often exposed to damaging fumes from burning coal and wood.”