What does cooking have to do with the environment?

Can cooking be environmentally unfriendly?

Each year, inhaling poisonous smoke causes the deaths of more than one million children and women. According to a study compiled by the IEA, death from chad poisoning is the second leading cause of death in the sub-Saharan African region. According to the director of the International Energy Agency, Faitha Birol

‍If we are touching on energy and climate issues currently in Africa, the most relevant issue is environmentally friendly food preparation (clean cooking).‍

The IEA president wants the European Union to support the promotion of clean cooking during the ongoing COP28.

What is clean cooking? IEA Report A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All (A Vision forClimate Neutral Cooking Access for All) defines it as household access to the use of basic cooking inputs, fuels and equipment that significantly reduce or do not emit pollutants harmful to human health. More than two billion people are currently deprived of the opportunity to cook food organically. This problem particularly affects countries on the African continent, where energy infrastructure is the least developed. In 2015, the UN set a goal for member states: to ensure that their citizens have access to the use of green cooking before 2030. To date, in some sub-Saharan countries, clean cooking fuels account for only 1-1.5% of total consumption of energy carriers for heating purposes.

How do Asian countries provide access to clean cooking?

The situation is different in Asian countries, where the number of people without access to organic means of food preparation is declining year after year. According to the aforementioned IEA report, in Asia the share has declined by 0.7 billion people since 2010, and every year there is an increase of 2-4% in the number of people who gain access to modern kitchens. This is thanks to the active policies of major developing countries that are trying to address the problem of energy poverty.

Thanks to initiatives by India's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, more than 80 million of the poorest households have received subsidized LPG cookstoves. Since 2015, the number of LPG users has increased by 300 million in India alone. In Indonesia, the government is also subsidizing assistance programs based on increasing access to LPG, which has helped increase the number of people using green cooking by 60 million, about 25 percent of the country's total population.

More than 70% of the PRC's population already has access to household appliances that enable green cooking. This group also includes a growing number of appliances powered by electricity, arguably a result of the mass migration of the population from rural to urban areas (130 million Chinese have migrated to urban areas since 2015), where access to distribution infrastructure is greater and more reliable. In rural areas, LPG and natural gas remain the more common energy carriers.

To meet the challenge of exponential growth in energy demand, China has been consistently investing in diversification of sources for many years. The Middle Kingdom is consistently modernizing and looking for new solutions, including environmentally sustainable ones, given the air quality in Chinese metropolises - gas, including LPG, is among the energy carriers being disseminated in addition to nuclear power or photovoltaics.

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Meeting the hard reality

In Africa, the biggest barrier to the energy transition is the lack of infrastructure, particularly the widespread lack of access to electricity. 43% of the continent's population does not have access to electricity,as African societies are mostly still rural - large-scale urbanization is just beginning. The data leaves no doubt - four out of five people in the sub-Saharan region cannot cook using low-carbon fuels. The situation has been exacerbated by the 2022 energy crisis, which has forced 100 million households to return to traditional cooking methods due to rising commodity prices. The situation could worsen as the population of sub-Saharan African countries grows: Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana and Nigeria. Upgrading infrastructure in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals has not kept pace with demographic changes, so experts predict that by 2030 there will still be nearly a billion people on the African continent without access to the ability to use technology for organic food preparation.

Africa shows all the challenges of green cooking like a lens. Lack of infrastructure inhibits the spread of modern household appliances. Electrification under power-system power deficits is currently unrealistic even for urban centers - in which case energy demand would increase disproportionately to the capacity of current infrastructure.

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The LPG solution?  

In regions with underdeveloped infrastructure or affected by natural disasters or humanitarian crises, the solution to the lack of access to clean cooking technologies is LPG. According to the UN'sAccess for All scenario, which it plans to achieve by 2030,LPG ranks first among the fuels to provide the African population with access to clean cooking. According to IEA projections, demand for LPG on the continent will more than triple by 2030, and LPG will become in the most important tool for solving the lack of access to clean cooking. This is happening with the full approval of the World Health Organization, which sees LPG as an instrument for improving the quality of life and health standards of African societies. LPG is an affordable solution to improving health and environmental standards, while being easy to transport and store. It is not without reason that the International Energy Agency points to Africa as the most promising market for LPG in the coming decades. From the report, we can learn that since 2010, more than 70% of people who have gained the ability to use green cooking have used LPG for this purpose, and the IEA expects that thanks to LPG, by 2030 more than half of Africa's population will enjoy the benefits of healthy cooking.

Already in Africa, there are innovations unheard of elsewhere, allowing easy access to liquefied petroleum gas in specific local conditions - among others, self-service dispensers have appeared in East Africa, where users can refill their cylinders themselves using authorization and mobile micropayments.

Summary

Analysis by the International Energy Agency carried out for the report A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All indicates that switching from traditional solid fuels (wood, coal, animal manure) to LPG means a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and toxic substances.

The mass uptake of LPG in Africa will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dramatically reduce the incidence of mainly women and children from diseases associated with pollutants produced by the operation of traditional hearths using solid fuels (3.7 million people die prematurely in sub-Saharan Africa each year because of this). It is these groups that are most exposed to the poisonous substances that are emitted in the process of burning charcoal, animal feces and garbage.

LPG is an essential part of the solution to the problem of meal preparation for the growing populations of developing countries. Funding from climate change adaptation funds to improve rural communities' access to clean meal preparation technologies - such as LPG - will bring liberation from energy poverty and improved health parameters to multitudes of people in these countries, as well as create a significant economic development boost.

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About LPG at COP28

The World LPG Association will host a session at the COP28 climate summit, during the International Chamber of Commerce's (ICC) "Climate Action is Everyone's Business Forum" event accompanying the conference.

Date: December 6, 2023 (Wednesday), 16:00-17:00

You are welcome to remotely participate in the session using the link: https://bit.ly/WLPGA_COP28 (Password: PARTNER)