Driving Force: Access to clean cooking (Johannes)

Description:

Approx. 2.6 billion people (~ 1/3 of global population) are living in areas without access to clean cooking possibilities. This comes with several negative impacts. First, each year approx. 4 million of people die due to breathing of harmful cooking smoke. Second, the usage of woodfuel and charcoal for cooking is amplifying climate change due to emission of CO2. Thirdly, harvesting the wood is often done in an unsustainable way and increases the biodiversity loss in an already stressed environment. Lastly, using dirty cooking processes is disproportionally negatively affecting woman as they are often responsible for cooking.

Enablers:

• Economical & Industrial: Global and decentralised electrification through PV panels and mini-grids leads to lower energy prices which makes it easier for low-income households to adopt clean cooking stations. Moreover, the role of women as "responsible for the kitchen" will change and women will become more independent which changes the habits.

• Innovation: New cooking technologies (such as solar cooking stoves) enable affordable clean cooking.

Inhibitors:

• Lack of financial funding for infrastructure due to non-willingness of developed world to transfer money and fiscal non-capability of developing countries

• Corruption

Paradigms:

"Phasing out traditional cookstoves by 2030 is projected to decrease fuelwood demand by 70%, compared to under the baseline scenario, and lead to reduced pressure on biodiversity, 40% lower greenhouse gas emission levels and a 55% reduction in child mortality attributable to household air pollution."

Without providing clean cooking fuel to all people around the globe, SDG 7 goals cannot be met.

Timing:

2019: 2.6 billion without access to clean cooking possibilities

2030: 2.4 billion without access to clean cooking possibilities

Little improvement by taking into consideration the current policies in place. However, if global funding (esp. from developed world) increases much much more people can be equipped with clean cooking possibilities. This is related to the electrification of the low-income areas in the developing world.

Web Resources:

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/06/07/report-universal-access-to-sustainable-energy-will-remain-elusive-without-addressing-inequalities

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2019/11/04/why-clean-cooking-matters

https://cleancooking.org/binary-data/RESOURCE/file/000/000/416-1.pdf

https://www.iea.org/reports/sdg7-data-and-projections/access-to-clean-cooking

https://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/towards-universal-access-to-clean-cooking-solutions-in-sub-saharan-africa