International Energy Agency (IEA) Expert Workshop on Clean Cooking in Africa by Michael Kelly, Chief Advocacy Director, WLGA
On Thursday 7th March, the World Liquid Gas Association (WLGA) participated in the International Energy Agency (IEA) Expert Workshop on Clean Cooking in Africa, hosted at IEA headquarters in Paris. The meeting was organised by the IEA and Chaired by the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania and the Government of Norway. The meeting was convened to feed into a high-level Summit that will be held on 14th May 2024.
IEA and the African Development Bank announced last year during COP28 in Dubai that they intended making clean cooking in Africa, a global priority in 2024. This will be achieved by supporting multi-stakeholder partnerships on clean cooking access at the country level, removing barriers for the growth of clean cooking across Africa and increasing commitments to clean cooking from public and private funders with the aim of reaching US $4 billion of mobilised capital investments annually from now to 2030. These meetings are part of this process.
In preparation for the Workshop, IEA conducted over 100 technical consultations with key stakeholders in governments, development agencies, financial institutions, international and non-governmental organisations, and the private sector, including WLGA and its members. The purpose of these consultations was to identify key barriers faced on the ground to achieving universal clean cooking access and the priority actions needed to unblock those.
During the Workshop, WLGA CEO, James Rockall stressed that LPG companies had the capital and knowhow and would be willing to make significant investments in Africa provided the national policy environments were adequate. Countries, like Tanzania that have made increasing access to LPG a top-line government priority, are already seeing significant amounts of investment. Mr. Rockall also noted that in many countries there is a lack of necessary infrastructure to bring LPG to market in an affordable manner, and that this could also be addressed through clear policy priorities.
Finally, Mr. Rockall urged the group to not let ideological opposition to fossil fuels prevent the best solutions from being selected and deployed. LPG has a proven track record as a clean burning modern fuel that can be scaled quickly with a light infrastructure footprint compared to grid energy. He pointed to countries like India, Indonesia and Brazil where large percentages of the respective populations cook on LPG as case studies that could provide learnings for Africa.
WLGA will continue to cooperate with IEA and the other stakeholders on their objective of making clean cooking a reality across the African continent. Through leveraging the global networks of experts and feeding their expertise into these kinds of initiatives, WLGA is working to ensure that LPG is recognised as the world’s premier clean cooking fuel.
