Scaling Modern Cooking Energy: A Global Call for High-tier Cookstove Innovations

Abstract

Indoor air pollution is a silent global emergency, causing 3.2 million premature deaths annually and driving significant deforestation (WHO, 2023; IEA, 2025). While clean cooking solutions exist, they remain one of the most under-scaled levers in sustainable development. This article explores the technical pathways, from advanced biomass gasification to electric cooking, needed to reach the Tier 4+ standards of the World Bank Multi-Tier Framework (World Bank, 2020; Mutlu et al., 2026). By identifying and labelling viable technologies that align with local socio-cultural determinants and economic barriers, the alliance between the Solar Impulse Foundation and Winds of Hope aims to bridge the gap through collaborative innovation while protecting human health and the environment.

1) Context & Benchmarking with the World Bank Multi-Tier Framework

By Mauricio Bertoni

Access to clean cooking is a fundamental pillar of human well-being, yet it remains one of the world’s most underestimated health and environmental emergencies. Currently, 2.3 billion people worldwide, including four out of five individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa, lack access to modern cooking facilities, relying instead on wood, charcoal, or kerosene (IEA, 2023). This dependence creates a devastating public health crisis: 3.2 million premature deaths occur annually due to household air pollution, primarily affecting women and children who breathe in fine particulate matter that penetrates deep into the lungs and bloodstream (WHO, 2023).

The crisis extends well beyond immediate health outcomes into systemic economic and environmental failure. The global health cost of cooking with polluting fuels is estimated at $2.4 trillion per year, driven by healthcare spending, climate impacts, and lost productivity (World Bank, 2020). Environmentally, the demand for firewood and charcoal drives the loss of 1.3 million hectares of forest annually, increasing local ecosystem vulnerability (IEA, 2025). This simultaneously undercuts multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 3 (Good Health), SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 7 (Affordable Clean Energy), and SDG 13 (Climate Action) (South Pole, 2021). To address this triple nexus of health, economic, and environmental impacts, the World Bank Multi-Tier Framework (MTF) developed a quality benchmark. The MTF categorises Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) across six technical dimensions: emissions, efficiency, convenience, fuel availability, safety, and affordability (World Bank, 2020). Here, clean cooking is explicitly defined as technologies reaching Tier 4 and Tier 5, which is a rigorous standard that separates basic "improved" stoves from advanced, clean systems capable of eliminating harmful indoor air pollution.

By Yabei Zhang

2) The Clean Cooking Initiative: A Strategic Alliance for Field Deployment

To bridge the gap between technical standards and real-world implementation, the Solar Impulse Foundation and the Winds of Hope Foundation have formed a strategic alliance. By combining humanitarian field experience with clean-technology assessment, the two foundations identify, evaluate, and accelerate solutions that both protect human health and the environment without compromising on performance or economic viability.

Despite the proven efficiency of advanced clean cooking technologies, they remain underfunded and insufficiently deployed. To address this deployment gap, the initiative focuses on 5 key levers:

• Raise Awareness: Elevate clean cooking to an international priority.

• Identify & Label: Evaluate efficient, ready-to-scale clean technologies.

• Federate & Collaborate: Connect NGOs, businesses, and public decision-makers to accelerate adoption.

• Facilitate & Deploy: Provide direct support through visibility, technical validation, and finance.

• Mobilise & Transform: Bring political & financial focus at the crossroads of health, climate and the fight against poverty.
  
  

To achieve this, a call for solutions has been launched to actively seek and evaluate solutions across the following targeted innovation pillars:

Innovators whose technologies fit within one of these pillars are invited to submit their innovations directly through the official Solar Impulse Foundation Cookstoves Call for Solutions platform by September 30th, 2026. Selected solutions will gain high-level recognition and be featured in a major strategic report which will be presented at COP32 in Ethiopia, positioning winners at the forefront of global policy advocacy and climate finance mobilisation.

Additionally, the Winds of Hope x Solar Impulse Foundation will award direct funding to a selected solution to implement its technology on the ground. The two key objectives are to strengthen the operational capacity to scale, and directly purchase and distribute cookstoves to frontline communities.

3) Navigating the Socio-cultural Landscape of Adoption

New technology achieves long-term viability only when it meets the exact needs and operational requirements of its end users. In clean cooking, advanced tools are often underutilised or combined with traditional open fires, a phenomenon known as “fuel stacking”, simply because device specifications fail to align with local culinary traditions and household workflows (Boudewijns et al., 2022). Literature reviews confirm that compatibility with regional cooking practices is a primary facilitator of long-term technology adoption (Ocen et al., 2024). For example, in Ethiopia, clean cooking devices must support the high, uniform heat surface required to bake injera, a traditional flatbread that accounts for nearly half of domestic energy consumption (Mutlu et al., 2026).

 

By Charliefleurene

The human dimension of clean cooking is also deeply tied to household decision-making and gender equity. Traditionally, women and young girls collect biomass fuel, creating severe “time poverty”, requiring up to four hours daily to forage for firewood, a burden that limits educational opportunities and exposes them to safety risks (Ocen et al., 2024). While women are the primary users of cookstoves, they often lack the authority to make household purchasing decisions; thus engagement strategies must involve both men and women to be effective (Ocen et al., 2024). 

Furthermore, financing mechanisms such as carbon finance credits or Results-Based Financing (RBF) reduce upfront hardware costs for local communities. Distributed micro-financing structures can enable localised supply chains, where targeted funding can deploy hundreds of clean cooking units while supporting regional employment and maintenance networks (Solar Impulse Foundation & Winds of Hope, 2026).

4) Future outlook: A strategic roadmap to COP32

The 2026 Call for Solutions represents the initial phase of a multi-year strategy designed to elevate clean cooking from a localised humanitarian issue to a global climate and human health priority.

This strategic roadmap culminates at the 32nd Conference of the Parties (COP32) to the UNFCCC in Ethiopia. As the UN’s primary international climate conference, COP32 brings together heads of state, development banks, and international climate experts. High-level advocacy efforts led by Bertrand Piccard, the Solar Impulse Foundation, and project partners aim to engage political decision makers and climate investors directly on African soil. 

By presenting a validated portfolio of Tier 4+ solutions at this global summit, the initiative aims to transition international policy from short-term humanitarian aid toward sustainable, market-based infrastructure development, establishing modern clean cooking as an essential component of global climate resilience and public health policy.

Conclusion

Addressing global energy poverty requires moving beyond temporary interventions to deploy scalable, economically viable clean cooking technologies. By establishing

rigorous technical criteria at the Tier 4+ standard, accounting for socio-cultural cooking practices, and utilising innovative financing models, modern cooking solutions can be successfully integrated into vulnerable communities, which is essential to improve public health, reduce environmental degradation, and achieve global climate targets.

References

• Boudewijns, E.A., et al. (2022). 'Facilitators and barriers to the implementation of improved solid fuel cookstoves and clean fuels in low-income and middle-income countries: an umbrella review', The Lancet Planetary Health, 6(6), pp. e475–e489.

• IEA (International Energy Agency). (2023). Access to Clean Cooking. Paris: IEA Publishing.

• IEA (International Energy Agency). (2025). Report on Forest Degradation, Household Energy and Fuel Collection. Paris: IEA Publishing.

• Mutlu, Ö., et al. (2026). 'Bridging Theory and Practice for Clean Cooking: A Practical Approach on the Optimal Selection of Biomass Cookstoves', BioEnergy Research, 19(1), pp. 42–58.

• Ocen, S., et al. (2024). 'Unveiling factors influencing choice of clean cooking solutions among households: a systematic review of literature', Frontiers in Sustainability, 5, p. 1324501.

• Solar Impulse Foundation & Winds of Hope. (2026). Clean Cooking Initiative — Technical Overview and Call for Solutions Guidelines. Available at: https://solutions.solarimpulse.com/cookstoves-call4solutions (Accessed: August 2026).

• South Pole. (2021). Why Clean Cookstoves Are an Important Climate Solution. Zurich: South Pole Blog. Available at: https://www.southpole.com/blog/clean-cookstoves-important-climate-solution (Accessed: August 2026).

• World Bank. (2020). The State of Access to Modern Energy Cooking Services. Washington, DC: World Bank Group.

• WHO (World Health Organization). (2023). Household Air Pollution and Health. Geneva: World Health Organization.

• Zhang, Y. (2021). Understanding the Multi-Tier Framework for Modern Energy Cooking Services. World Bank Group. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6825865579006623745/ (Accessed: August 2026).