Policy pathways for mapping clean energy access for cooking in the Global South: a case for rural communities

Abstract

Currently, over 1.5 billion people, especially in the Global South, live without access tomodern energy for household uses, especially for cooking. Therefore, this study examines the cook-ing space of the Global South with a specific focus on the rural communities to map alternativeenergy sources, technologies and supporting policies to drive clean cooking services for improvedsocioeconomic development. It begins with a literature review on clean cooking technologies andclean energy access for the Global South, which leads to the suggestion of clean cooking policies bymapping technology, affordability, accessibility, climate action, business model and local capacity.In order to ensure that the validation is appropriate, three online questionnaires were designed tocapture three categories of key stakeholders with distinctive and complementary interests in cleanenergy access for cooking: (i) End-users, (ii) Energy Suppliers and (iii) Interest Groups in rural com-munities in Fiji, Ghana and Nigeria. The responses are analysed to conduct a comparative studyacross the three countries examined. Based on the above, an attempt is made to present broad basepolicy pathways for adopting clean cooking services in the rural community for sustainable devel-opment. The policy pathways harmonize the major stakeholders in the cooking space: Govern-ments, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), clean energy developers, business services andthe end-users. In addition, a business model in the context of a rural community cooking space isproposed, stating that the initial life of the clean cooking business should be government-drivenand, thereafter, followed by incentive-driven at the mid-life of the business (say, 25% technologypenetration) and private-sector-driven at the late-life (say, 45% technology penetration). It is ex-pected that the effort made in this work could be advanced by investigating the detailed techno-economic parameters of clean cooking technologies that could be influenced by the policy pathwaysestablished in connection with the sociocultural factors associated with energy services.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

Altmetrics