Integrating clean cooking into National Energy Access Planning
Tools and considerations for planning and implementing eCooking.
Abstract
This Knowledge Brief aims to inform approaches to energy access planning in low- and middle-income countries that simultaneously address access to electrification and clean cooking. It focuses on eCooking which is at the heart of this integration.
The Knowledge Brief provides a review of relevant tools and methodologies for integrated energy access planning and gives an overview of policy, finance and knowledge initiatives that help create enabling conditions for these plans to be implemented and to propel clean cooking transitions. Benefits of eCooking are numerous, spanning positive health impacts, emission, and deforestation reductions, as well as time and cost savings, particularly for women. To unlock the eCooking potential and facilitate faster and more efficient transition pathways, integrating cooking and electricity considerations in planning exercises, and increasing the linkages between energy system and access planning is critical to build more integrated and resilient energy systems which meet local demand reliably and affordably. Although most of the current planning initiatives tend to focus on parts of such integrated approaches, there has been an increase in the number of attempts combining relevant planning tools to increase the level of cross-sectoral and vertical integration of energy planning, particularly as more open-source tools have become available. Fully integrating energy systems and energy access planning, while considering the electrification-cooking feedback loops in the latter, could allow planners to conceptualise the interplay between infrastructure availability, e-cooking viability and demand, and system sizing and technology options from the start.
This report is part of the Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) Programme.
Citation
Bisaga I and others. Integrating Clean Cooking into National Energy Access Planning MECS Report 2024