22 September 2019: The World Bank launched the Clean Cooking Fund during the high-level event on the energy transition track of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Action Summit. Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK have announced contributions or support to the Fund.

During a session titled, ‘Energy Fueling People Clean Cooking, Energy and Health,’ Filippo Grandi, High Commissioner, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), noted that the vast majority of world’s 71 million refugees and displaced people do not have access to sustainable and clean cooking.

In addition to the Clean Cooking Fund, the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Bank launched the Health and Energy Platform of Action (HEPA), which aims to help countries strengthen the political and technical cooperation between the health and energy sectors. Participants also proposed a High-Level Coalition of Leaders for Clean Cooking, Energy and Health to be supported by HEPA in collaboration with governments and stakeholders and to be launched in conjunction with the African Union Summit in January 2020.

Speakers called on all governments to make clean cooking solutions a top political priority.

In conclusion, moderator Kandeh Yumkella, Rapporteur, Clean Cooking, Energy and Health, highlighted that speakers had stressed that global energy transformation must be accelerated to achieve both the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change and recognized that the world is currently not on track to meet the SDGs, including SDG 7 (on affordable and clean energy) or to keep global temperature rise this century below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. He also noted that speakers had called on all governments to make clean cooking solutions a top political priority and to put in place specific policies, cross-sectoral plans, and public investments to catalyze much larger amounts of private financing.

Also during the high-level event, in a session titled ‘Energy Fueling Development,’ many speakers discussed the potential of renewables and energy storage, with several highlighting the World Bank’s Energy Storage Partnership. The importance of risk mitigation to promote increased investments in renewable energy at the institutional, transactional and project levels was also discussed, with announcements of support to the World Bank’s Solar Risk Mitigation Initiative. [ENB coverage of the high-level event on the energy transition track]