Explore the vast range of titles available.

For the past 40 years, the dominant ‘policy’ on cooking energy in the Global South has been to improve the combustion efficiency of biomass fuels. This was said to alleviate the burdens of biomass cooking for three billion people by mitigating emissions, reducing deforestation, alleviating expenditure and collection times on fuels and increasing health outcomes. By 2015, international agencies were openly saying it was a failing policy. The dispersal of improved cookstoves was not keeping up with population growth, increasing urbanisation was leading to denser emissions and evidence suggested health effects of improved stoves were not as expected. A call was made for a new strategy, something other than ‘business as usual’. Conventional wisdom suggests that access to electricity is poor in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), that it is too expensive and that weak grids prevent even connected households from cooking. Could a new strategy be built around access to electricity (and gas)? Could bringing modern energy for cooking to the forefront kill two birds with one stone? In 2019, UK Aid announced a multi-million-pound programme on ‘Modern Energy Cooking Services’ (MECS), specifically designed to explore alternative approaches to address cooking energy concerns in the Global South. This paper outlines the rationale behind such a move, and how it will work with existing economies and policies to catalyse a global transition.

[...]the market dynamics are different. In more remote areas people collect their fuel, and, in market communities, people stack purchased fuels with collected fuels. [...]there is a reluctance to monetise fuel, turning the labour of collection into real cash payments made to either a utility, mini grid operator or solar home system distributor. [...]the affordability of electric cooking in comparison to alternative fuels decreases. [...]the tariffs charged by mini grid operators vary considerably and are, in general, significantly higher than the grid tariff.

The Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme has generated data on the amount of energy required to cook meals using different fuels and cooking devices. Fuel stacking is commonplace, especially among households with access to modern fuels. Experience shows that people tend to use modern fuels for quick tasks, such as preparing a cup of tea, but prefer to use biomass fuels for foods that take longer to cook. Therefore, changes in the choice of foods in the household menu have the potential to affect the transition to modern fuels. This paper discusses the potential of innovative and emerging aspects of food systems in low-income countries to impact on households. It starts by looking at the processing of indigenous crops to create convenient and nutritious food products. This leads to an overview of the rapid growth of the food processing industry and future opportunities. Consuming food that has been prepared outside of the home is also a common and rapidly growing practice, which is likely to be driven (and disrupted) by technological innovation. Cooking energy considerations depend largely on fuel stacking behaviours, and the paper argues that modern food systems have the potential to reduce energy consumption in the kitchen, and to play a role in displacing traditional biomass fuels with modern fuels.

This paper is a review of research undertaken, and subsequent policy change enacted, in the years 2018 to 2022 regarding the integration of cooking loads and needs into modern energy planning. Building on an earlier paper which described how the dominant global approaches to tackling the enduring problem of biomass-fuelled cooking was failing, and how a new UK Aid programme (Oct 2018) would be seeking to intentionally change international energy policy towards cooking and enable a significant transition in energy use, in this paper we review whether this strategy is being adopted by researchers, governments, and the private sector across the world and whether it is likely to make a significant contribution to the fulfilment of Sustainable Development Goal 7. In particular, the call is for integrated planning of modern energy inclusive of cooking loads—the potential ‘Mutual Support’ that both can lend to each other. The review considers the international commitments made by donors and governments to this end, the research that positions the use of modern energy as a cost-effective proposition, the urbanisation and societal changes reinforcing such planning, and positions the review in the light of climate change and the need to reach net zero carbon by 2050.

Globally, 2.8 billion people still cook with biomass, resulting in health, environmental, and social challenges; electric cooking is a key option for a transition to modern energy cooking services. However, electric cooking is assumed to be too expensive, grids can be unreliable and the connection capacity of mini-grids and solar home systems is widely assumed to be insufficient. Developments in higher performance and lower cost batteries and solar photovoltaics can help, but they raise questions of affordability and environmental impacts. The range of issues is wide, and existing studies do not capture them coherently. A new suite of models is outlined that represents the technical, economic, human, and environmental benefits and impacts of delivering electric cooking services, with a life-cycle perspective. This paper represents the first time this diverse range of approaches has been brought together. The paper illustrates their use through combined application to case studies for transitions of households from traditional fuels to electric cooking: for urban grid-connected households in Zambia; for mini-grid connected households in Tanzania; and for off-grid households in Kenya. The results show that electric cooking can be cost-effective, and they demonstrate overall reductions in human and ecological impacts but point out potential impact ‘hotspots’. The network analysis shows that electric cooking can be accommodated to a significant extent on existing grids, due partly to diversity effects in the nature and timing of cooking practices.

The decentralization of governance is increasingly considered crucial for delivering development and is being widely adopted in sub-Saharan countries. At the same time, distributed (decentralized) energy systems are increasingly recognized for their role in achieving universal access to energy and are being promoted in sub-Saharan countries. However, little attention has been paid by governments and energy practitioners to the dynamic interrelationships between national and local government and the role of governance decentralization in transitioning to distributed energy systems. This paper traces the complex relationships between accelerated delivery of distributed energy and decentralized local governance systems. The argument is grounded in an exploration of two different approaches to decentralized energy systems governance in Kenya and Malawi. For Kenya, analysis focuses on the energy sector since the adoption of the new decentralized constitution in 2010. In Malawi, it focuses on the involvement of the authors in piloting Local Authority Energy Officers in districts under the decentralization of Malawian energy policy. Our analysis shows that accelerating the speed and scale of implementation for distributed energy systems and enhancing their sustainability and socio-economic impacts is directly linked to the quality of local and national governance structures and their interrelationships. The paper extends existing work in energy and evidence literacy for policy actors by developing an analytical framework, to enable more effective local governance within energy access initiatives in the Global South.

This paper presents the feasibility of using solar photovoltaics (Solar PV) as the energy source for cooking with special focus on the loss mechanisms and possible remedial measures. If the heat loss is minimized, to reduce the temperature losses, it is possible to cook with a low power source less than 500 W. A slogan has been adopted by the researchers—‘It is temperature that cooks food not heat’, meaning that it is not the flow of energy that cooks food, but rather, that food is cooked when held at a key temperature for a time. The slogan draws attention to the core concept that if heat loss is minimized, maintaining the temperature inside the cooker and the cooking pan, then the cooking process becomes very energy efficient. The paper considers ways to maintain temperature, but with due reference to the ‘art of cooking’, those all-important cultural processes that determine how meals are made. A prototype solar home system e-cooker was designed, fabricated and tested for cooking different foods in Bangladesh. Experimental results are presented to show that cooking is possible using much less power and energy than is commonly thought. A cost analysis is also presented to show that such a cooker can be cost effective in off-grid areas if connected to a properly designed Solar Home System.

This paper presents a conceptual approach for discussing health information seeking among poor households in Africa and Asia. This approach is part of a larger research endeavor aimed at understanding how health systems are adapting; with possibilities and constraints emerging. These health systems can be found in a context of the changing relationships between states, markets and civil society in low and middle income countries. The paper starts from an understanding of the health sector as a “health knowledge economy”, organized to provide people with access to knowledge and advice. The use of the term “health knowledge economy” draws attention to the ways the health sector is part of a broader knowledge economy changing the way individuals and households obtain and use specialist information. The paper integrates an actor centric approach with the theory of planned behavior. It seeks to identify the actors engaged in the health knowledge economy as a precursor to longer term studies on the uptake of innovations integrating health services with mobile phones, commonly designated as mHealth, contributing to an understanding of the potential vulnerabilities of poor people, and highlighting possible dangers if providers of health information and advice are strongly influenced by interest groups.

The introduction of treadle pumps for water supply into Cambodia is described. The relative costs and suitability of the pumps for the farmers of Prey Veng are discussed. The design, operation and local maintenance of the treadle pumps, which were made of folded and welded metal is described. The similarity of the treadle pump design and operation to traditional technology is considered. Local marketing of the pump is discussed. Factors influencing the suitability and success of the treadle pump are outlined.