MECS promotes multiple co-benefits of rapidly scaling access to clean, electric cooking at Super Pollutants High Level Reception, London Climate Action Week

A UK Government-led event, hosted at St. James’s Palace, and attended by His Majesty The King, the Super Pollutants High Level Reception, held on 24 June 2026 at St. James’s Palace during London Climate Action Week, gathered global leaders to accelerate action on reducing methane and other short-lived climate pollutants. During the event, UN Secretary General António Guterres gave a speech, urging:

“The climate crisis is accelerating – and we are now on course to overshoot the 1.5-degree limit in the coming years. Our task is to keep that overshoot as small, short, and safe as possible – and to bring temperatures back down. That can’t happen without drastically reducing emissions, starting now, and accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels, starting now.”

The UKaid (FCDO) funded Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme was delighted to have a strong presence at the event. Professor Ed Brown and Dr. Simon Batchelor OBE (MECS Research Directors) attended the Reception with Professor Matthew Leach (Research Coordinator, MECS), Malcolm Bricknell (International Liaison Manager, MECS) and Dr. Helen Tighe (Business Development Manager, Global Electric Cooking Coalition (GeCCo)) running a joint MECS/GeCCo stall in the event’s Exhibition Space. They were promoting the critical importance of rapidly scaling access to clean, electric cooking in tackling the climate crisis, the opportunities with digital metering (illustrated by some of the work by ATEC) and the multiple co-benefits to be gained from accelerating the modern energy cooking transition.

The MECS team also specifically promoted the newly launched report “Black Carbon Add-On Methodology” by Berkeley Air Monitoring Group, Orbis Air and MECS, which sets out a methodology for calculating the rapid climate mitigation that can be achieved by reducing emissions of this super pollutant. The new methodology is intended to be layered on to a carbon credit project with little additional effort.

MECS team members were delighted to meet and speak with King Charles III during the event.

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Featured image, top, credit: Matt Leach.