Developing the Alliance Clean Fuels Strategy
The Alliance is supporting a range of catalyzing activities to help drive sales and sustained adoption of clean cookstoves and fuels. With the diversity in fuel availability and affordability across multiple geographies and the different challenges for rural and urban consumers and humanitarian settings, the Alliance is leveraging the expertise of its partners to ensure the achievement of its fuel-related objectives.
The Alliance convened fuels experts for a one-day meeting in early September to discuss and prioritize the critical steps necessary for the Alliance Secretariat and key partners to remove barriers to processing, enhanced efficiency and environmental impacts of global fuel production and supply chains, and adoption of clean fuels. This meeting included partners that focus on unprocessed and processed biomass, charcoal, biogas, methane, ethanol, solar, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), as well as experts on environmental conservation and ecosystem services and fuel access in humanitarian settings.
Participants discussed the need for data and life cycle analysis about fuel options, such as environmental impacts and efficiencies, emissions, costs for production/distribution, consumer preferences, and “household efficiency.” This type of data and analysis can be used to support programs’ and investors’ decisions about fuels and to provide independent information needed to demonstrate the benefits of cookstoves and fuels projects.
The group also looked at toolkits, knowledge sharing, and certification schemes as options to improve and demonstrate the benefits of clean fuel production, distribution, and use. Financing options were also discussed, including the benefit of the Alliance’s forthcoming Spark Fund and loan guarantee mechanism, to support innovation and capacity building for entrepreneurs and to drive further investment for the sector.
The recommendations from this meeting and from the Fuels Subgroup of the Technology and Fuels Working Group will provide the basis for the Alliance’s Clean Fuels Strategy, which will be integrated into the Alliance’s Business Plan and Country Action Plans.