The Opening Plenary will consist of opening remarks from representatives of the Kenya Ministry of Energy, the European Union, Norway, the Netherlands, the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the Clean Cooking Alliance. A high-level panel discussion that follows will explore the role global advocacy, increased investment, and national policies can play in achieving universal access to clean cooking by 2030.
A number of noteworthy announcements are expected to be made during the plenary, including the release of the Kenya Clean Cooking Sector Study, the formation of a coalition of African political leaders, new funding and finance facilities, and the kick-off of a global advocacy campaign.
A strong enabling environment is critical for the clean cooking sector to thrive and grow. While every country faces distinct policy challenges, research on clean cooking technologies, cost-benefit analyses, and other evidence-based tools can inform the design of effective policies and an enabling environment that benefits businesses and consumers alike. In the first half of this session, policymakers from Kenya, Ghana, and China will discuss the status of clean cooking in their countries, successful policies for clean cooking, the case for providing tax and duty benefits, and the energy transition for the sector. The conversation will facilitate learning among policymakers and highlight opportunities for funding organizations to help governments implement their policies and scale clean cooking interventions. In the second half of this session, the discussion will focus on new research around the cost-benefit analysis of various technologies and interventions, and learnings from tariff-based initiatives and case studies from large-scale implementation programs.
Driving demand for clean cooking remains a challenge. While some countries have seen incremental increases in sales and usage, overall growth has been slow, and behavior change interventions designed to boost demand across a range of options have had mixed results. This session will apply lessons learned from demand creation efforts – both from within and outside the clean cooking sector – to identify opportunities for development-focused organizations to complement company-led marketing initiatives. The session will feature marketing experts in fast-moving consumer goods, creative advertising, and international development, who will offer unique perspectives on increasing consumer demand. Participants will also make recommendations about the unique roles that different organizations can play to stimulate widespread uptake of clean cooking products.
To ensure that an investment-ready pipeline of clean cooking companies sets the foundation for an inclusive industry, women must be part of the process. To do so, targeted efforts must be advanced to strengthen the capacity of clean cooking actors, from investors to companies, to understand, see value in, and adopt investing tools and approaches that embed a gender lens. As gender-lens investing (GLI) is at a nascent stage in the clean cooking sector, this session will demonstrate the effectiveness of GLI in other sectors and the value add it can provide to the clean cooking sector. Through a moderated panel discussion with GLI experts, business testimonials from companies who have used GLI tools, and roundtable working groups focused on unpacking GLI approaches, this session will equip participants with practical knowledge and guidance on how GLI principles can enhance businesses as a whole.
The clean cooking sector requires roughly USD $4 billion per year to achieve universal access by 2030. There are, however, significant obstacles in attracting such investment. The key challenge remains the absence of commercially viable companies that can crowd in private investment. Access to different types of early-stage capital now is critical to increasing the universe of companies that will be able to attract private capital later. This will require active participation from donors and investors alike, with shared goals of supporting financial de-risking, developing investment funds, and creating financial and technical assistance programs to build a pipeline of investible businesses. What is the role of each type of financing entity? How should they work with other organizations to seek alignment? These questions and others will be addressed by the panel within a broader discussion of existing approaches to, and future ideas for, closing the gaps that inhibit flows of capital to the clean cooking sector.
Following the success of the Business-to-Business (B2B) session at last year’s Clean Cooking Investment Forum in Kigali, GET.invest, the European multi-donor programme, is partnering with the Clean Cooking Alliance to repeat the B2B session at the Clean Cooking Forum 2019.
In 2018, the clean cooking sector reached a new milestone with the publication of the first international testing standard for cookstoves. Countries are now beginning to adapt, adopt, and implement these standards, as well as other standards relevant to clean cooking. This session will examine the different components necessary for successful standards implementation by highlighting experiences from different countries and contexts. In particular, this session will discuss how the design and implementation of standards can drive industry growth. Policymakers and other stakeholders will come away understanding the complexity of setting standards, what happens when it’s done right, and how standards can help the sector innovate.
Following the success of the Business-to-Business (B2B) session at last year’s Clean Cooking Investment Forum in Kigali, GET.invest, the European multi-donor programme, is partnering with the Clean Cooking Alliance to repeat the B2B session at the Clean Cooking Forum 2019.
This session will provide an opportunity to hear about two key initiatives of the UK Aid-funded Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme. The first is an opportunity to discuss the findings of a comprehensive review of the Global Report on the State of Access to Modern Energy Cooking Services. The second is a review conducted by members of the MECS team of our current knowledge about the potential for cooking with electricity and its application under different local contexts.
The session will feature a mix of presentations, panel discussions, polling, and Q&A to interact with the audience.
How to boost sales by understanding gender dynamics. Join Ashden and the Whitten & Roy Partnership to discuss the results of a new Ashden study exploring how women and men make decisions about solar energy, how they pay for it, and how solar impacts them differently. Join us over breakfast to explore the valuable lessons for clean energy enterprises in East Africa and beyond. Pre-registration is required for this session. Please email Louise.Hosegood@ashden.org if interested in attending.
As the clean cooking industry has evolved, so too have results-based financing (RBF) programs. This session will highlight current and upcoming RBF initiatives in the clean cooking sector and discuss how RBF has changed in the past few years in the context of the Paris Agreement. The panelists will discuss a range of aspects, including: RBF design elements, successes and challenges from RBF programs to date, opportunities under the Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030, and what needs to be done to move beyond monetizing only carbon, and towards paying for outcomes such as gender, health, and disuse (vs. use) of inefficient and polluting cooking options. Panelists will also explore the innovative financing that has emerged to mobilize debt financing on the back of RBF structures. This session will emphasize the unique and distinct role RBF continues to play in catalyzing market development.
Access to cooking solutions is a matter of survival to those who have been displaced or otherwise affected by conflict, violence, and natural disaster. Fuel scarcity and traditional cooking methods directly impact the food security, health, safety, and livelihoods of refugees, displaced people, and other vulnerable populations. Humanitarian agencies often struggle to deliver effective cooking solutions on their own, lacking the required resources or technical expertise. However, a growing emphasis on public-private partnerships through vehicles such as the Agenda for Humanity and the Sustainable Development Goals is opening the door for private companies to partner directly with humanitarian agencies in bringing cooking solutions to displaced and crisis-affected people. Following discussions initiated at the 2019 Humanitarian Energy Conference, this session will explore current opportunities, barriers, and incentives for such partnerships, referencing recent cases in Kenya and Bangladesh.
The growth of clean cooking businesses often relies on imports from other countries in the region or from manufacturing hubs such as China. To achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2030, the global clean cooking supply chain must be upgraded to lower search and transaction costs for cross-border businesses. This session will bring together a diverse panel to discuss global supply chain strategies, the role for China in supporting businesses in their growth strategies, how international partners can ensure the quality of these products, and how matchmaking across geographies can be enhanced.
For the clean cooking industry to attract the USD $4 billion estimated to achieve universal access, investors need to make meaningful and strategic choices, and be able to tap into viable market opportunities. While still small in number, some companies are on the path to financial sustainability at scale. What type of business models are currently receiving capital flows and why? Through a series of conversations between investment experts and the companies they have invested in, this session will highlight critical insights, including how these businesses were able to access significant capital and what investors are looking for when they make investment decisions.
What can we learn about what has or hasn’t worked in clean cooking programs? What do we still need to learn about how to achieve success in clean cooking? This session will present recent evaluation findings from programs on behavior change communications in Kenya, Nigeria, and Bangladesh; technological advancements in measuring stove use; and a comprehensive approach to achieving community-wide health impacts using clean stacking in Nepal. The session will also cover future research on clean stacking, and will provide a moderated opportunity for discussion about future evaluation needs in the sector. Panelists will discuss the importance of evaluation evidence in assessing the sector’s approaches to achieving universal access to clean cooking.
Crowdfunding is appealing not only for its potential to unlock new sources of funding, but also for its ability to operate beyond the demands and expectations of conventional private and public sources of capital. Several companies catering to base of the pyramid (BOP) markets, including clean cooking companies, have been successful in raising short-term loans through crowdfunding platforms. These diverse crowdfunding models each have individual strengths and challenges, and together offer an interesting set of alternative financing pathways. While still considered relatively novel, key lessons are emerging which will be useful for businesses seeking access to new forms of funding. In this session, crowdfunding platforms and clean cooking companies will discuss building innovative, in-house consumer finance programs and leveraging alternative funding avenues to support such programs.
To develop a commercially viable clean cooking industry requires a range of affordable, high-quality, and reliable products and services. LPG has the potential to be one of those products, but has several associated safety implications, both real and perceived, surrounding its supply chain. LPG safety issues are traditionally addressed through policy and regulation, which can be long and complicated processes and become particularly challenging once illegal practices become pervasive. These issues not only inhibit uptake and adoption by consumers, but also impede investment flow, business growth, commercialization, and market entry. However, private sector-led innovations that can mitigate safety issues, either directly or indirectly, have begun to gain traction and drive market growth. This session will be an interactive discussion with both panelists and the audience to solicit inputs regarding safety-related market barriers, private sector innovation, new private sector opportunities, and other means of overcoming safety barriers that inhibit LPG market growth.
Reaching profitability is difficult for any company, but achieving it within the clean cooking sector has its own unique set of challenges. Different market contexts and operational conditions are key determinants in business decision-making; there is no “one size fits all” approach nor solution. Where some businesses have tried to scale too quickly and failed, others have taken a slow and steady approach to figure out a “recipe for success” and have achieved profitable margins and business sustainability. This session will feature clean cooking entrepreneurs that have tried many different approaches to get to their current level of success and attract the right capital for growth, and the lessons they can share about what has worked and what hasn’t.
Kenya’s national targets of achieving universal access to electricity by 2022 and universal access to modern cooking energy services by 2030 are providing the impetus to close the energy access gap by providing electricity and clean cooking services to remote, low density, and traditionally underserved areas of the country. It is in line with this that the Ministry of Energy is implementing the Kenya off Grid Solar Access Project - KOSAP. The clean cooking sub component of this project aims at transforming the cookstove market in the underserved counties from a focus on low-efficiency baseline stoves (Tiers 0 -2) to cleaner, higher-efficiency stoves (Tiers 3-4). To accomplish this objective, activities will be focused on the market for cleaner household cooking appliances. This sub component will pilot this approach in 5 underserved counties in the Northwest of Kenya and will replicate successful elements of this pilot in three other underserved counties. This will be achieved by incentivizing private sector to sell the stoves and fuels through a Results Based Finance (RBF) facility. A call for proposals has been issued to cookstove suppliers to develop business plans and commit to selling a large number of stoves in the targeted counties. The RBF facility will provide winning service providers with financial support to enable them to market their stoves locally within the target counties, transport them to the target communities in number and sell them to willing buyers in communities. This session will present the project approach and progress to date.
Women entrepreneurs in clean cooking are not a homogeneous group. As such, financing, business support, and technical assistance must be tailored to meet their unique sizes and stages of business growth, whether new micro-enterprises seeking to break even or commercial SMEs seeking to scale and increase investments. This session will spotlight women entrepreneurs across the sector, from micro-enterprise to SMEs and beyond, and will consist of an open discussion around what type of tailored financing, business, and technical support is needed at each stage of women’s entrepreneurship. Curating this space will serve to individualize and enhance the visibility of women entrepreneurs and create a platform for them to share their unique experiences, exchange ideas, and reflect on the type of tailored support they are in need of to enhance business growth.
Many clean cooking companies serve base of the pyramid (BOP) markets – a consumer segment for which data tends to be lacking. Using alternative data and focusing on the right data collection and analysis tools can give companies an edge to better serve their consumers. In this session, data companies will discuss how clean cooking companies can use data and analytics to accelerate growth – even in rural, frontier markets. Panelists will illustrate how companies can use cutting-edge data collection tools, data science techniques, and data from surveys and satellite imagery to better understand who their ideal consumers are, where these consumers are located, and how much these consumers can pay for clean cooking products. The discussion will also include practical applications of this data: specifically, how to optimize distribution, accelerate sales, and ensure sustainable growth.
In the clean cooking sector, much attention is rightly given to household-level cooking. However, open fires and traditional biomass stoves are also widely used for entrepreneurial and institutional activities. Adopting cleaner and more efficient stoves for these commercial and productive applications can lead to improved working conditions, higher profit margins, reduced environmental impacts, and potentially higher-quality products. This session will share successful business cases for institutional and productive uses of improved cooking technologies in various sectors, including agriculture and fisheries. The session will feature a range of experts, including representatives from the private and public sectors as well as local implementers, to discuss exactly what is needed to improve the enabling environment, at the district and national level, and accelerate investments for institutional and productive cookstoves uses.
The clean cooking sector is experiencing a growth in innovation around technologies, business models, marketing approaches, and behavior change strategies. Game changing innovations can dramatically contribute to scaling the sector and bring us closer to universal access to clean cooking solutions. This session will feature public and private sector innovators who will discuss how their product, service, or approach has the potential to address key challenges in the sector.
The closing plenary will focus on spotlighting women's outstanding leadership across the clean cooking value chain. From a session with Alliance Women Entrepreneur of the Year Award winners and select Energia entrepreneurs, to an engaging high-level panel of women leaders, this session will create a space for women to share their unique experiences, elevate their voices, and express the momentous efforts they are leading to grow and scale the sector.
This year’s Forum will offer participants a selection of site visits showcasing innovative clean cooking solutions in and around the Nairobi area. The visits will take place on Thursday, November... Read More
This session will invite policymakers, researchers, project implementers, companies, and other clean cooking stakeholders to discuss the findings from recent and ongoing research conducted in Kenya and to discover how these findings can (and cannot) be translated into national clean cooking-enabling policies.