MECS urges critical importance of rapidly accelerating access to clean, electric cooking at High-Level Ministerial Clean Cooking Meeting, G20 Brazil 2024 

The UKaid (FCDO) funded Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme has a strong presence at several high-level events taking place on the sidelines of the Clean Energy Ministerial and the G20 Energy Transition Working Group at the G20 2024, Foz Do Iguaçu, Brazil.

Taking place on 1 October 2024 (14:00 – 17:00 BRT), a Clean Cooking Technical Event aims to generate dialogue with clean cooking industry and organisations on Brazil’s G20 Presidency Clean Cooking Roadmap helping to ensure its implementation will lead to concrete actions towards universal access to clean energy. Encouragingly, the Brazil G20 Presidency has emphasised clean cooking as a key priority of G20 Energy Transitions Working Group in 2024 and requested the International Energy Agency (IEA), Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), and the World Bank prepare a strategic Roadmap with key milestones for achieving universal access to clean cooking. The Roadmap has been developed under the leadership of Michelle Hallack, who coordinates the Bank’s Clean Cooking Fund and leads ESMAP’s partnership with Loughborough University under MECS. Professor Ed Brown, MECS Research Director and Professor of Global Energy Challenges, Loughborough University, has also supported the drafting of the Roadmap and will be speaking at the technical event, intervening in the first session to emphasize the critical importance of rapidly accelerating access to clean, electric cooking to drive global momentum towards getting on track to achieve SDG7 and the terms of the Paris Agreement and moderating the second session.

The Roadmap will also take centre stage in the High-Level Ministerial level event ‘Clean Cooking: at the Intersection of a Just and Sustainable Energy Transition’ in conjunction with the G20 Energy Transitions Ministerial Meeting, to be held on 4 October 2024 (16:00 – 17:30 BRT). The objective of this High-Level Ministerial is to launch the Roadmap and deepen the dialogue on and political commitment to universal access to clean cooking.  As indicated above, Prof. Brown has been acting as an advisor to the organisations co-authoring the Roadmap and will be helping draft the meeting outcomes. During the event, Prof. Brown will also highlight aspects relating to the forthcoming report “Sustainable Scaling: Meeting the Clean Cooking Challenge in Africa”, led by The African Energy Commission (AFREC) in collaboration with MECS.

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Featured image credit: Centre for Research in Energy and Energy Conservation (CREEC), Uganda.