Strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem for clean cooking

Building a strong and equitable clean cooking sector is vital for the health and livelihoods of more than two billion people who still use traditional, polluting forms of biomass for cooking. Women must be at the center of this transition.

Project status

Active

Vision

Strengthening the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem for Clean Cooking (SEE-Clean Cooking) aims to address the challenges of women being disproportionately affected by polluting forms of cooking and at the same time, harness their vast capacity to develop clean energy enterprises and leverage their networks to accelerate the energy transition in their communities. SEE-Clean Cooking also recognizes that women are instrumental in shaping gender-aware policies and programmes that will drive change in the sector.

Countries/regions

Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, and Uganda

The context

An estimated four million premature deaths occur annually (mostly women and children) due to indoor air pollution caused by cooking with solid fuels. Switching to clean cooking fuels and methods is vital for the health of people and the planet.

Clean cooking solutions, such as improved biomass stoves, electric cookers, solar cookers, and stoves using cleaner fuels like LPG, biogas, or ethanol, reduce health risks, environmental degradation, and carbon emissions. They also enhance energy efficiency and provide affordable alternatives for low-income families and communities.

On a larger, community scale, biodigesters offer another clean alternative. They use a process of anaerobic digestion to break down organic materials, such as animal manure, food waste, and crop residues into useful products such as biogas – which can be used for cooking, heating and to power generators (among other uses) and organic fertiliser for improving soil quality and enabling better crop harvests.

The program

ENERGIA provides technical support to the program run by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) to transform the way in which people in underserved communities cook. ‘Strengthening the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem for Clean Cooking (SEE-Clean Cooking) promotes a cleaner way to cook, using biodigesters and higher-tier cookstoves in Africa and Asia.

Gender approaches have been largely missing in the clean cooking sector, with the market dominated by male entrepreneurs and the policy and enabling environment around biogas, biofertilizers and clean cooking lacking a gender responsive approach. As a technical support implementer (TSI), ENERGIA supports efforts to put women at the center of the clean cooking agenda: for women to help shape the policies and programmes that will drive change, and for women to develop clean energy enterprises in their communities.

SEE Clean Cooking has three core pillars:

Business development: supporting renewable energy enterprises to improve their business operations and providing skills development to enable the growth and development of clean energy SMEs.
Access to finance: using public funding to reduce risks, increase profitability and make clean cooking solutions more affordable and attract more private capital to the market.
Creating an enabling environment: helping to develop a favourable, sustainable market for the growth and adoption of clean cooking solutions.

The program is divided into two core focus areas

African Biodigester Component (ABC), which aims to facilitate the construction and installation of 50,000 small-scale and 250 medium-scale biodigesters in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Niger and Uganda. This will result in energy access for at least 250,000 people and a yearly reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over 180,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Higher Tier Cooking Component (HTCC), which aims to provide 600,000 people in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Uganda with access to higher-tier clean cooking solutions that significantly reduce harmful emissions, improve energy efficiency, and provide cleaner, safer cooking options compared to traditional methods. HTCC solutions are typically categorized as tiers 4 and 5 according to the World Bank’s Multi-Tier Framework for cooking (MTF). The HTCC component focuses on strengthening the supply side of local markets, helping SMEs improve their business operations, access finance for scaling and innovation, and create an enabling environment for clean cooking.

ENERGIA’s goals within the program

ENERGIA advises and supports the implementers (global, country and thematic) for both components of the program (ABC and HTCC). We support them to:

Develop and apply effective gender strategies and plans in all HTCC and ABC initiatives.
Build the capacity of practitioners to implement gender strategies thematically, nationally and regionally.
Build the capacity of staff for gender mainstreaming in clean cooking and biofertilizer valorization.
Use a gender lens in funding, implementation support, and monitoring and reporting.
Support program organizations to better deliver effective gender plans and actions and ensure they have the capacity to sustain gender mainstreaming activities into the future.

Wider aims of the program

Increasing women’s access to finance.
Supporting the inclusion of women as entrepreneurs for biogas, biofertilizer and high-tier clean cooking solutions (HTCC).
Creating an enabling environment that supports women’s needs.
Increasing the proportion of women including female-headed households that use biogas and HTCC, and that female-headed households and women are part of increased valorisation of organic fertilizer.
Increasing the ambition and ensuring intentional actions to reduce gender inequalities and facilitate women’s participation in the biodigester and HTCC market at all possible levels.
Ultimately, ensure that the wider SEE Clean Cooking programme will result in a gender transformative impact.