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By Jack Graham [[link removed]] | Climate change and nature correspondent, UK

Polluting fuels

How we cook our food each day has a bigger impact on the climate than you might think.

Burning fuel to prepare our daily meals is responsible for about 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions. That's about the same as global aviation.

And air pollution from traditional fuels like wood, kerosene, charcoal and dung also wreak havoc on people's health. Household air pollution, mostly from cooking smoke, is linked to around 3.7 million premature deaths a year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

My colleague Bukola Adebayo reports from Lagos this week on the movement underway to shift people to cleaner stoves [[link removed]].

In Africa, about 80% of households still cook using traditional, polluting fuels.

Aanu Ajayi sells energy-efficient stoves in Nigeria's largest city. She has to do live demos in order to sell them, but thinks attitudes are beginning to change.

"The women see that it doesn't give out black smoke or heat up their kitchen like the firewood they use," Ajayi said.

A woman cooks using a clean-stove inside her house at Kachoroba village of Kiambu county Kenya, August 16, 2023. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi

Whereas many Asian and Latin American countries have shifted millions to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), the IEA says Africa is lagging behind [[link removed]] because of inadequate financing and few government initiatives.

In response, the IEA held an inaugural Africa clean cooking summit in Paris last week, which saw $2.2 billion in pledges [[link removed]] from governments and the private sector.

"This summit has delivered an emphatic commitment to an issue that has been ignored by too many people, for too long," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said.

Workers assemble clean wood cookstoves at a factory in the Ruiru area of Kiambu County, Kenya, July 27, 2023. REUTERS/Monicah Mwangi

Cleaner stoves

One of the biggest challenges facing African countries is the price of clean cooking compared to traditional fuels.

Despite Nigeria sitting on Africa's largest gas reserves, inadequate processing means it flares, or burns off, about 300 million cubic feet every day.

Therefore, the country relies heavily on imports for cooking fuels like LPG - a canister of which doubled in price after global gas prices surged and the government axed a fuel subsidy last year.

In Lagos, Ajayi said many customers simply can't afford cleaner stoves. Her cheapest one costs more than a whole month on the national minimum wage.

"They need a year to save that much," she said.

Funds committed in Paris could support infrastructure like LPG facilities to help Nigeria meet its climate plans - which include switching half of households to stoves fired by LPG by 2030. Others have suggested energy-efficient stoves connected to off-grid solar panels.

Whatever the solutions, cleaner cooking could cut planet-heating emissions and save millions of lives. That's a truly healthy meal.

See you next week,

Jack

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