energy for all

About working group cooking & heating

Domestic Biogas   |    LPG   |      Clean Cookstoves

Around three billion people worldwide rely on biomass and coal for cooking and heating with traditional stoves or open fires. . Exposure to indoor air pollution from cooking and heating imposes health risks that cause the premature deaths of about two million people annually in developing countries. The traditional ways of burning solid fuels for cooking with low-efficiency stoves are also linked to concerns on gender development, deforestation, black carbon emissions and climate change.

Two complementary approaches can improve the living conditions of people relying on unsustainable biomass and coal use: switching to cleaner fuels, such as biogas and liquefied petroleum gas, and promoting more efficient and cleaner burning of traditional biomass and coal through stove improvement.

Such interventions may bring in significant economic benefits. According to  the World Health Organization, a 50% reduction in the number of households using biomass as the primary cooking fuel would achieve benefits to society of nearly $91 billion per year compared to net intervention costs of $13 billion. This can mostly be accomplished through productivity gains and a reduction in health problems resulting from indoor air pollution. Making improved cooking technologies available to people relying on burning biomass fuels and coal with traditional stoves would result in a net savings of $34 billion and generate an economic return of $105 billion a year over a ten-year period.

To help address these issues, the Energy for All Partnership established a thematic working group on cooking to support activities of the Domestic Biogas Working Group, the LPG Working Group, and the Clean Cookstoves Working Group.