President William Ruto of Kenya has called for COP31’s electrification agenda – a flagship initiative to accelerate the electrification of the global economy – to include a push for electric cookers to replace polluting firewood and charcoal.
The Turkish and Australian co-hosts of the November summit want governments to sign up to a pledge to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% globally by 2035 and 50% by 2050. It is currently around 23%.
“We should arrive at COP31 with clean cooking firmly embedded in that electrification and efficiency agenda,” Ruto said during an event on clean cooking organised by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the governments of Kenya, Norway and the US at the ongoing UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.
“The kitchen is where the energy transition enters daily lives for nearly one billion people,” the Kenyan president said. He added that schools, hospitals and prisons – as well as homes – need to switch to clean cooking fuels.
COP31 electrification pledge leaves out clean power commitment
Ruto said that – as well as the climate, health and gender equality benefits of clean cooking – electric cooking can make investment in electricity generation and networks more profitable and ensure households get more value from electricity connections.
LPG or electricity?
According to the IEA, about 6% of sub-Saharan African households – overwhelmingly in southern Africa – used electricity to cook in 2024 – while just under a fifth used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Despite being a fossil fuel and worse for indoor air quality than electric cookers, LPG is widely regarded as a clean-cooking fuel as the damage it does to the climate and to health is far less than the firewood and charcoal on which most sub-Saharan Africans rely on.
A new IEA report on electrification found that electric cookstoves are 10% cheaper over their lifetimes than LPG stoves. But they are more expensive upfront so restricted access to finance holds back their adoption, as do power cuts, a lack of access to electricity and cultural preferences.
At the event in New York, some speakers promoted electric cookers while others stressed “technology neutrality”, implying that LPG should be used where appropriate.
UK climate envoy Rachel Kyte was more in the former camp, saying that “clean cooking must be fit for the modern age of energy transitions and the age of electricity” and “genuinely clean and future-facing”, adding that countries can “ride the trends of electrification” to roll out clean cooking.
As disruptions to oil and gas supply chains push up the cost of cooking gas, Kyte asked: “Why should households and governments be locked into solutions that are simply going to be a victim to fossil fuel and price volatility”.
Alexander De Croo, administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said that renewable energy offers the best potential to achieve clean cooking because decentralised clean power can get to everywhere on the African continent.
Echoing Kyte, he added that “[renewables] detaches you from the volatility of fossil fuel that you see today, very often”, adding that it poses a very low level of risk compared with other energy systems and is one of the easiest ways of reducing emissions throughout the world.
But Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said that country realities are different and so the pathways to achieving clean cooking will require different combinations of LPG, electricity, bioenergy and other solutions.
Technology neutrality
With half of the about two billion people lacking access to clean cooking globally living in Africa, the African Union’s commissioner for infrastructure and energy Lerato Mataboge said the continent prioritises “technology neutrality” and does not have a preference for electricity or LPG if either would help achieve clean cooking.
She said national circumstances of African countries must be respected, adding that the continent needs a range of affordable, reliable and safe cooking solutions as well as approaches that allow countries to select technologies that are “appropriate to their resources, infrastructure and household needs”.
She added that financing decisions should not exclude viable solutions “solely because of the energy source from whence they come”. Whatever clean-cooking technology is used, she said that “affordability must extend beyond the purchase of a stove. We must ask if a household can afford the next cylinder refill or the next electricity payment”, she said.
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Dola Oluteye, senior fellow in energy and transport policy at the UCL Energy Institute, agreed, telling Climate Home News that – while electric cooking is viable in parts of Africa where reliable electricity, affordable appliances and suitable infrastructure already exist – those conditions remain out of reach for much of the continent.
She warned that making electric cooking the only measure of a clean cooking transition could slow progress in countries where other technologies offer a more immediate solution. “My concern is a purity trap,” Oluteye said.
She pointed to an IEA scenario forecasting that, with clean cooking rolled out quickly, over 60% of people gaining access to clean cooking in Africa from 2024 to 2040 would do so through LPG, compared with 17% through electricity. Bioethanol and biogas combined would account for 11% while advanced biomass cookstoves make up 10%.
“The intermediate solutions cannot be abandoned while the grid catches up,” she said, but added that if handled well, cooking could be “one of the best things that could happen to African electrification”, providing the predictable demand that gives utilities a reason to invest in electricity networks and reliability.
Amina Mohammed, UN deputy secretary-general and former Nigerian environment minister, warned at the New York event against repeating the experience of programmes that supplied cooking technologies without adequately considering whether they actually worked for the women expected to use them.
Speaking after Birol, Ruto, US energy secretary Chris Wright and Norwegian international development minister Åsmund Aukrust, Mohammed joked that she was responding to “four men for whom this is a big women’s problem”.
After Birol said that the IEA had been working on the issue for 25 years, Mohammed said the fact that the problem had not been solved in that time was “probably an indictment of the international community on what is supposed to be a huge problem for women and a billion of them”.
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Push for cooking to be part of COP31’s electrification agenda
More than a dozen countries, including Germany, South Korea, Pakistan and several small island states, have publicly backed the Turkish COP31 presidency’s flagship electrification pledge.
The voluntary pledge aims to raise electricity’s share of global final energy consumption to 35% by 2035, from 23% currently, but does not specify how that electricity should be generated.
The COP31 presidency is not expected to publish a full list of backers until next week, as it continues to rally support. But at least 14 countries have publicly endorsed the pledge, according to a Climate Home News analysis of speeches and official statements.
Alongside COP31 co-host Australia and COP32 host Ethiopia, they include Germany, Norway, Finland, South Korea, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Togo and Liechtenstein, as well as the small island states of Palau, Seychelles and the Solomon Islands.
The European Union is widely expected to join the pledge this week, although member states still need to formally approve the decision, Politico reported. On Wednesday, President Ursula von der Leyen supported the pledge in her personal capacity and encouraged others to do the same.
Major economies still on the fence
Other major economies have welcomed COP31’s focus on electrification while stopping short of endorsing the pledge.
British Prime Minister Andy Burham said on Thursday that he was proud to support the summit’s focus on electrification. He said it matters for energy security, for creating good jobs in clean energy and manufacturing, and for lowering people’s bills.
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Brazil’s environment minister João Paulo Capobianco ssaid on Thursday that electrification was “an important front” in climate action, but warned it should not be pursued “for the sake of it”. It should instead serve as a means of improving efficiency and cutting emissions. He said Brazil would work with the Turkish proposal and suggest adjustments to allow “specific solutions” that reduce emissions, without giving details.
Saudi Arabia was more openly sceptical. Energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told the leaders’ summit that emissions reduction is “what unites us”, “not necessarily the track to achieving it”. “The expansion of electrification does not necessarily mean cutting emissions, so long as we do not consider the sources of its production,” he said, adding that countries’ choices must be respected.
Clean power strings attached
Many of the nations formally backing the initiative have attached some strings to their support. At a high-level roundtable on Wednesday, the low-lying Pacific island nation of Palau said it would sign on to the pledge. But it added that electrification “must not become a substitute or a distraction” from the chief goal of transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Seychelles also endorsed the pledge but added that it must be connected with cleaner electricity. “Electrifying more activities while continuing to burn fossil fuels will not deliver the full economic or climate benefits,” the country’s representative told the roundtable.
Australia’s climate and energy minister Chris Bowen, whose country is co-leading the pledge with Türkiye, has defended its design. “Electrification is almost always a good thing,” he told the Outrage and Optimism podcast recently. He argued that switching to an electric car cuts emissions by 60% even on a coal-fired grid, and by 90% when powered by solar.
Doug Arent, senior fellow at the WRI Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition, said the most important thing “is that there is significant support for the concept of electrification”. He expects more countries to “recognise their pathway to be behind the 35 by 35” in the coming years.
Calls for finance
Other developing countries backing the pledge have underlined the critical importance of access to finance. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif showed off his country’s people-led boom in rooftop solar and growing rollout of electric vehicles. But he added that “momentum without finance cannot be sustained,” and said the burden of new technologies cannot fall on countries already in debt.
Zimbabwe backed the pledge but warned of the high capital costs and financial bottlenecks facing developing countries. Its representative proposed a global electrification investment facility that would provide first-loss guarantees for projects under Mission 300, an initiative to connect 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030.
The Solomon Islands, another supporter of the pledge, asked for a dedicated finance access window for small island nations and least developed countries (LDCs).
Tuesday saw the launch of a global finance coalition backed by COP31 host Türkiye and COP32 host Ethiopia aimed at supporting clean electrification in developing countries.
Closing the roundtable, Türkiye’s energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar, who chaired the session, claimed the 35×35 pledge had found broad support worldwide. He called for a “smart” energy transition that draws on all available technologies, including carbon capture, use and storage.
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COP31’s electrification pledge wins support, with caveats on clean power and finance
Climate Change
Albanese must deliver credible action to end fossil fuel chokehold, not just rhetoric
ANTALYA,Türkiye, Thursday 12 November 2026 — In response to Prime Minister Albanese’s COP31 Leaders’ Summit address, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, speaking from Antalya said:
“Prime Minister Albanese’s COP31 address was full of nice rhetoric, but once again failed to confront or even mention the root cause of the climate crisis — fossil fuels.
“In Antalya, UN climate chief Guterres told leaders to “tell the truth”. The truth is Australia can not credibly talk about its clean energy transition while continuing to expand the industry it needs to leave behind. Australia must reckon with reality; its damning track record of 38 coal and gas approvals since it took office in 2022.
“We meet in Antalya amidst a global energy shock and dire projections of 1.5°C overshoot. Overshoot means something in the Pacific — it means irreversible harm, lives and cultures lost forever, entire nations at stake. We must face the fierce urgency of now.
“Never before has the need to end the fossil fuel chokehold been so abundantly clear, as our Pacific communities again suffer the consequences of a global economy hooked on coal, oil and gas. The Pacific needs credible roadmaps and clear timelines to unhook from fossil fuels — Australia can’t keep saying implementation and not reflect it with credible action.”
ENDS
COP31 images and video available here in Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact: Kate O’Callaghan in Antalya (GMT+3) on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal)
Albanese must deliver credible action to end fossil fuel chokehold, not just rhetoric
A second set of world leaders give their speeches on Thursday before heading out of town and leaving their negotiators to it. After around 40 leaders spoke on Wednesday, today there will be just 25 or so including the UK’s Andy Burnham, Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez and Bangladesh’s Tarique Rahman.
But Brazil’s President Lula is still there and is expected to keep grabbing headlines, along with California’s Governor – and maybe next US president – Gavin Newsom – and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg who has lost none of her star power, if the crowd around her in the press centre was anything to go by.
We’ll bring you highlights through the day on issues ranging from finance to methane, and update you on a pledging event for the Pacific Resilience Facility, which the climate-vulnerable region is relying on to keep small island nations as safe as possible in the face of intensifying storms, drought and sea level rise.
The post COP31 Bulletin Day 4: Burnham speaks with UK climate policy under fire appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 Bulletin Day 4: Burnham speaks with UK climate policy under fire
COP31’s electrification pledge wins support, with caveats on clean power and finance
Albanese must deliver credible action to end fossil fuel chokehold, not just rhetoric
