International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Abstract: Clean cooking must be prioritized and progress accelerated. In 2019, 66 percent (59?71) of the global population had access to clean cooking fuels and technologies?comprising electric, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), natural gas, biogas, solar, and alcohol-fuel stoves. Technical recommendations defining ?clean? fuels and technologies are set out in ?WHO Guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion?. (WHO 2014). Yet there remain some 2.6 billion (2.2?3.1) people who cook mainly with polluting fuels and technologies, using traditional stoves fueled by charcoal, coal, crop waste, dung, kerosene, and wood. Due to limitations in the underlying data, analyses use types of cooking fuel rather than cookstoveand-fuel combinations. The methodology section at the end of the chapter provides additional details. Global access is tracked by surveying proportions of the population that rely mainly or primarily on clean cooking fuels and technologies. The global access rate has improved over the past few decades, albeit at an alarmingly slow pace (figure 2.1). By 2030, if states adopt only policies presently stated, only 72 percent of the population worldwide will have access to clean cooking fuels and technologies (IEA 2020).27 This means that nearly a third of the global population will still not have transitioned to clean cooking by 2030; therefore the adverse health, environmental, and developmental impacts of polluting cooking solutions will persist among these vulnerable populations.