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‘I Can’t Afford Cooking Gas,’ Shutdown of Kenya’s Koko Biofuel Firm Wipes Out Clean Cooking Options
In Nairobi's informal settlements, the closure of Kenyan supplier Koko Networks has left thousands of households without access to clean bioethanol cooking fuel.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Spark+ Africa Lends $1 Million to Expand Clean Cooking Loans in Ghana
The transaction is part of a series of recent Spark+ financings aimed at supporting clean cooking in Africa.
- Categories
- Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Standard Chartered Leads $200 Million Article 6 Bond For Clean Cooking In Ghana
The instrument, issued by the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), is designed to channel private capital into projects that cut emissions while addressing public health and social challenges linked to traditional cooking fuels.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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BURN and Key Carbon Joint Venture Receives First CCP-Labelled Credit Issuance
In an endorsement of the market’s demand for new standards of integrity, the entire issuance was presold through the climate action platform Patch.
- Categories
- Environment, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Scaling up Access to Electric Cooking Solutions for Households in Zambia
"The electric cookers offer families economic as well as health benefits by reducing household fuel costs and indoor air pollution associated with traditional cooking methods."
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Health Care, Social Enterprise
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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From Energy Access to Economic Empowerment: Workable Models for Financing a Just Transition in Emerging Markets
Today 2.1 billion people live without clean cooking fuels and technologies, and over 660 million people lack electricity access. Yet as Anthony Osijo at Bboxx points out, as global conversations largely focus on decarbonizing energy resources to combat climate change, these millions of households still cannot access essential products and services the rest of the world takes for granted. He argues that emerging markets can't simply be left in the dark because their kerosene lamps and diesel generators aren’t environmentally viable, especially if they lack access to suitable alternatives. He explores ways to finance and deliver a just climate transition — while also eradicating energy poverty.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment
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Convincing Customers to Buy What’s Best for Them: How Lessons from Clean Cooking Can Increase the Adoption of ‘Merit Goods’
Despite their clear benefits, “merit goods” — products or practices that improve both individual and societal welfare — often struggle to achieve widespread adoption. As Jean-Louis Racine at the Clean Cooking Alliance explains, even when these products and behavior changes offer solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges, traditional marketing approaches often fail to build significant consumer demand for them. He examines the clean cooking sector’s experience in selling cookstoves and fuels to emerging markets customers, highlighting effective strategies that can accelerate consumer uptake of these and other merit goods.
- Categories
- Energy
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Turning Failure into Fuel: An Emerging Learning Platform Aims to Bring the Hidden Challenges in Humanitarian Energy to Light
The humanitarian energy sector is eager to learn from success. But according to clean cooking and energy access researchers Nazifa Rafa, Tash Perros, Iwona Bisaga and Ronan Ferguson, its failures are usually buried in reports or quietly brushed aside, and there's often a disconnect between what’s documented in impact reports and what practitioners experience on the ground. They argue that this dynamic is unsustainable in a sector with high risks, urgent needs and shrinking funding. In response, they share an emerging solution: the Humanitarian Energy Learning Platform, a centralized, inter-donor learning system designed to highlight what’s going wrong in humanitarian energy access, and how practitioners can systematically learn from it.
- Categories
- Energy
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