On 19 April 2024, the Global Stocktaking to mark the completion of the UN Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, 2014-2024, took place at the United Nations headquarters, New York. The goal of the global stocktaking is to review progress achieved at the end of the UN Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, 2014-2024, and to raise ambition and accelerate action towards attaining Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) by catalysing innovative solutions, investments and multi-stakeholder partnerships. The Global Stocktaking brought together high-level representatives from Member States and other leaders from all regions, featuring ministers, high-level officials and global leaders from governments, UN entities, international organizations, business, civil society and other stakeholders.
The UK aid (FCDO) funded Modern Energy Services (MECS) programme and global partners had a strong presence at the event, advocating the importance of rapidly scaling access to electric cooking to make strides in progress towards SDG 7. Professor Ed Brown (Research Director, MECS; Professor of Global Energy Challenges, Loughborough University) joined distinguished speakers at the closing segment of ‘Thematic debate 2: Addressing energy’s interlinkages and strengthening means of implementation and partnerships’, where he highlighted that the relationship between electrification and clean cooking is often overlooked – and urged the international community to make sure that the restated international commitments for the 2030 electrification target will be done in ways that can simultaneously deliver electric cooking, therefore utilising the same expenditure to simultaneously advance both components of SDG 7. This was central to the commitments of the partners involved in forming the Global electric Cooking Coalition (GeCCo) that was launched at CoP28.
During the opening segment of ‘Thematic Debate 1: Closing the energy access gap and transitioning to decarbonized energy systems’, Ms. Damilola Ogunbiyi, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-chair of UN-Energy, highlighted the importance of increased ambition and scaled up multi-stakeholder partnerships to achieve SDG 7, drawing upon the example of GeCCo.
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Image credit: Nhyira Asante, SEforALL.