Radha’s Message for April 2015
Dear friends,
I recently returned from Ghana, where organizations from across the public and private sectors are working to scale up the use of cleaner cooking fuels and stoves. As part of my trip, I talked with many of the people leading the sector, including officials from various government ministries. There’s clearly a momentum growing toward the implementation of a new national fuels strategy that will ensure that Ghanaians have access to safe, sustainable, and affordable fuels for cooking and other needs.
It’s fitting then that Ghana has been selected as host of the Clean Cooking Forum 2015 in November. The four-day conference will be an opportunity for practitioners to come together to learn from each other and to work towards gaining the capacity and resources necessary to scale adoption of clean cooking solutions. We’ll be releasing additional information soon, but in the meantime, please mark your calendars to be there in November 10-13 in Accra.
As part of efforts to measure the progress of the global adoption of cleaner, more efficient cooking technologies and fuels, the Alliance has released its 2014 Results Report Survey. I strongly encourage all partners to fill out the Survey. Thanks to the strong support of our partner organizations, the Alliance’s results reporting helps inform donor, investor and other private and public sector decision making regarding funding and support for the sector, as well as aids the development of policies that create an enabling environment for market scaling efforts. Results are expected this autumn, and the deadline for reporting is June 30th.
As we joined the world celebrating Earth Day this month, we took the opportunity to bring extra attention to the environmental and climate impacts of clean cooking. As we know, reliance on inefficient cookstoves and fuels leads to a wide variety of environmental problems including deforestation, air pollution, and climate change.
A story from this month’s newsletter highlights the fact that inefficient cooking practices are responsible for up to 25% of black carbon emissions, the second-largest contributor to climate change. Household air pollution also accounts for 12% of ambient air pollution (and 30% in South Asia), meaning that the detrimental impacts of cooking with solid fuels and inefficient cookstoves go far beyond our homes.
In an effort to tackle black carbon emissions from inefficient cookstoves, the Alliance has partnered with a number of organizations to develop a methodology for quantifying and monitoring emissions reductions and associated climate impacts from black carbon and other short-lived climate pollutants. The new methodology will be instrumental in driving finance into projects with immediate and measurable impacts.
Looking ahead, I would like to draw your attention to two significant events happening next month. The first is an Alliance-hosted workshop on “Beyond Distribution: Ensuring and Evaluating the Adoption of Clean Cooking and Its Benefits” in Peru. Stakeholders will enable experts and implementers to better understand what adoption really means and what we need to do to drive adoption of life changing technologies. In addition, the Alliance will also have a major role at the Sustainable Energy for All Forum in New York. Our focus will be to draw attention to the growing clean cooking sector and the Alliance’s learnings that can be applied across the energy sector.
And finally, we have redesigned our website to ensure enhanced access to areas that you value the most and also redesigned the newsletter for ease of perusal. We hope you like the new look, functionality and feel of both!
Warm regards,
Radha