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Methodology and Definitions
Determining the number of low- and middle-income countries that include implicit or explicit clean cooking measures in their NDC was achieved by searching for keywords within each NDC and reviewing each instance in context. NDCs in non-English languages were translated into English.
The Clean Cooking NDC Tracker uses the term “clean cooking” broadly to refer to cooking fuels and technologies that reduce climate pollutants. This includes both clean fuels and technologies (e.g., electric, LPG, biogas) and improved biomass cookstoves.
| Term and Definition | Example |
| Quantified Measure: Any measure with a quantified GHG or non-GHG indicator. A target is a quantified measure with clear timelines and GHG or non-GHG goals. | Uganda: Decrease share of biomass energy used for cooking from 88% to 50% in 2025 and 40% in 2030. (non-GHG indicator)
Bangladesh: Use energy-efficient appliances in household and commercial buildings (achieve 19% and 25% reduction in emission respectively). (GHG indicator). |
| Non-Quantified Measure (Descriptive Measure): A measure that is descriptive (i.e., does not include a quantified indicator) but still demonstrates a country’s intent to pursue a particular activity. | Ethiopia: Reducing residential biomass use through fuel switch (shift from unsustainable biomass energy demand to electric stoves, renewable biofuels (e.g., residues)) and biomass efficiency (improved cookstoves). |
| Policy: A regulation, law, or national plan to support the NDC commitments.
Note: This analysis is based solely on analysis of each country’s NDC and does not consider other policies or plans at the national level unless expressly referenced in the NDC. |
Bangladesh: Bangladesh’s Country Action Plan for Clean Cook Stoves 2013 (CAP 2013) focused predominantly on the removal of existing financing barriers by enabling access to capital by SMEs, promoting access to climate funds, leveraging government funds to finance women-led businesses in the sector and lobbying for additional financing options from international donors at low rates. About 4.5 million improved cook stoves have been distributed already. A new National Action Plan for Clean Cooking in Bangladesh (2020-2030) is being formulated following its success. |
| Conditional: Implementation of the measure is conditional on international support | Benin: Promotion of access to cooking equipment using domestic gas for 275,000 new households […]. Of the 275,000 new households, 175,000 (or 63.7%) are conditional on international support; the other 100,000 (or 36.4%) are planned with domestic resources. |
| Unconditional: The country plans to implement the measure with domestic resources | Myanmar: The government is committed to reducing its reliance on coal from 33% under a business-as-usual scenario to 20% (3620MW) as an unconditional target by 2030. |
Types of Mitigation and Adaptation Measures and Related Keywords
| Type of Measure | Description | Keywords | Examples | Notes |
| Explicit clean cooking | A measure that includes or is entirely focused on clean cooking | cook*, stove, oven, “food preparation” | Uganda: “Increase share of clean energy for cooking from 15% to 50% in 2025 and 65% in 2030.” | |
| Broad household energy uses (implicit clean cooking) | A measure referring broadly to household energy uses, meaning that it could apply to cooking, lighting, or heating | residential, domestic, home, house*, appliance, firewood, fuelwood, bio*, coal, wood, gas, “energy poverty”, “energy poor”, “energy access”, “access to energy”, electrification, “electricity access”, “access to electricity”, solar, and/or LPG | Bangladesh: “Use energy-efficient appliances in household and commercial buildings (achieve 19% and 25% reduction in emission respectively) by 2030.” | This category’s criterion for inclusion is the implicit indication of applicability to cooking.
Measures exclusively targeting lighting, heating, or cooling (e.g., acquisition and installation of 1,500,000 LED lamps to replace fluorescent tube lamps in households) are excluded from this analysis. |
* Indicates that different word endings may be applicable (e.g., cook, cookstove, cooking; biomass, biogas, bioenergy, biofuels)
Data Sources
NDCs are available for download here.
| Regions | Data Source |
|
World Bank. 2026. Country and Lending Groups. |
| Economic Categories | Data Source |
|
World Bank. 2026. Country and Lending Groups. |
| Additional References | Data Source | Notes |
| Proportion of population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technologies for cooking (%) | World Health Organization. 2023. Proportion of population with primary reliance on clean fuels and technologies for cooking (%). | Data from this source is from 2021. This source defines clean fuels and technologies in accordance with WHO guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion. This includes households primarily relying on electricity, biogas, natural gas, liquified petroleum gas (LPG), solar or alcohol fuels for cooking. |
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