In October, Rachel Kyte, the U.N. special representative on Sustainable Energy for All described a new path toward sustainable cooking for all at the LPG for Development Summit in Marrakech organized by the World LPG Association. The video is posted by the Global LPG Partnership. http://glpgp.org/lpg-for-development-summit-marrakech/ In one notable passage, Kyte called for more unity in the clean cooking sector, long characterized by competition among variegated factions pursuing a range of cooking-energy choices. Here's the video: https://vimeo.com/242255514

1. CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY
LPG for Development Summit
Marrakech, Morocco
“Think Big”
October 3, 2017
Rachel Kyte
Special Representative of the Secretary General for
Sustainable Energy for All and CEO of Sustainable Energy
for All (SEforALL)
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I wish the World
LPG Association (WLPGA) a successful Forum and thank
you to the Global LPG Partnership (GLPGP) for making
today happen.
I want to thank you all of you for being in this room.
Because whether you realize it or not, each of you,
collectively, are doing critically important work to end
energy poverty and help create better, safer and more
prosperous set of communities all around the world.
You work on exceptional energy. I’m here to say to you
that this exceptional energy is poised at the right timing
to contribute to our global goals. You are part of an
energy transition. Gas will be a very important part of
that energy transition. And that energy transition is at the
heart of the jobs, manufacturing, water services,
agribusiness, health, education, all of which are at the
heart of the Sustainable Development Goals. All of these
goals were agreed by all countries in 2015, when the
world’s leaders agreed to a set of universal Sustainable
Development Goals. One of those goals – SDG 7 – calls

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for us to secure affordable, reliable, sustainable and
modern energy for all by 2030. And the two most
important words there are “for all.”
In September 2015 in New York, 193 countries agreed to
the SDGs and three months later, 195 nations signed the
Paris climate agreement – committing to putting the
world on a “well below 2°C” trajectory.
What that agreement did was make more urgent and
lifted up the global goal of sustainable energy for all to
pull up the other goals. The goal of sustainable energy is
really a focus on the reliability and affordability of clean
energy that all will have to have access to by 2030, and
by 2050 we need to decarbonize the energy system for
the most part. These are promises we made to each
other. The consequence is that we are involved in a
transition where at the end we will have decarbonized,
decentralized, digitalized energy systems that serve
everyone.
Now two years later, because of the careful work done by
many organizations under the auspices of Sustainable
Energy for All, we know through the Global Tracking
Framework that 1 billion people still have little or no
access to electricity, over 3 billion people do not have
access to clean cooking. Some 84% live in just 20
countries in Asia and Africa – those with the largest
access deficits.
At this current rate of progress, only 72% of the world’s
population will have access to clean fuels and cooking and
technologies by 2030. So we can wait for the GDP per
capita to finally get to that golden mark of $40,000 per
annum and yes - everyone will have access to clean fuels
for cooking. Or we can act.
Last week, Sustainable Energy for All at the General
Assembly together with other organizations launched a
series of reports called “Energizing Finance”. We wanted
to know if financial flows started to shift as result of
targets, government policies and new markets. We looked
at international and domestic finance, at public, private

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and development finance, what countries do with their
tax base, their private investment, in equity and debt.
The estimates for closing the gap in electricity are about
$45 billion per year until 2030. We found that committed
funds or investment are only just under half of that. It’s
not disbursed and reaching people who don’t have access
yet. But there is some progress.
Global annual clean cooking investment needs by one
estimate are at least $4.4 billion per year
However, we are only able to track clean cooking
investments across the high-impact countries to an
average of just over $32 million a year for residential
uses over 2013 to 2014.
I just want to repeat that one more time.
What’s needed to close the clean cooking gap is at least
$4.4 billion per year and collectively, and right now, we
can only track about $32 million.
The data is probably not that bad, but that means that
somebody is not actually tagging and tracking - which
means it isn’t a priority. And we’re not even close. We
haven’t yet created the markets, understood fully the
importance of people’s access to clean cooking and for
the technologies of clean cooking. A lot of the attention
goes to the technology and not so much to the fuels.
In Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria, a first-time
assessment of the cumulative cost of meeting
government targets for the cooking sector for fuels and
technologies by 2030 are estimated to be in the order of
[$258.2 billion]. Over 95% of the cost of meeting these
targets is found not in the stoves but in the fuels.
Why are we spending so much more disproportionate
attention to a conversation about clean cooking
technologies and much less about what it takes to build
vibrant markets for clean fuels for cooking? How come we
don’t have the data? Let’s analyze the data and then act.

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Clean cooking and clean energy track require significantly
more attention to meet international commitments by
2030.
We don’t need to make the arguments again about how
much better this is for children’s and women’s health and
what it will do to economies when women’s time is freed
up. We don’t need to go again through the opportunity of
investment, jobs, and what happens to a community
when clean fuels for cooking arrive. We know that people
live longer, we know the incidence of disease comes
down, children can go to school and women are able to
work.
We know that switching to clean fuels – and typically LPG,
or adopting advanced combustion cook stoves that burn
biomass more cleanly and efficiently – can reduce
exposure to health risks.
Can we shift our mindset and can we collectively act?
I don’t believe this is the time for incremental solutions in
this country or that country. 3 billion people can be seen
as a development problem or as an extraordinary
opportunity of wealth creation. It can be seen as a
problem, or as “big market”.
The need is urgent and there’s room for everyone to be a
hero within it. There are signs of success, we can
replicate from that and it’s possible to scale.
We watched the example of India, and the aggression
with which the Modi government went after a target
relentlessly, surprising itself with the speed with which
made progress. Of course, we need to understand if that
progress translates into improvement of lives and health
statistics coming down - the true measure of
development - but this comes with time.
In 2007, Indonesia introduced a kerosene to LPG
conversion program, which converted 56 million
households and microbusinesses by 2014. Over this same
period, Indonesia’s GDP per capita also increased by
about 73%. Over 2012-14, Indonesia made significant

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progress, raising its clean cooking access rate by more
than 8% annually.
Those countries that prioritize closing the clean cooking
gap and who pursue policies to do so, can and do see
rapid progress. Angola, Bhutan, Maldives and Peru all
raised clean cooking access rates by more than 4%
annually.
Many countries showing improvements were also natural
gas producers, which suggests that domestic availability
can be an advantage. The achievements of this group of
countries shows that – if the issue receives greater
priority on the policy-making agenda – faster progress
may be possible in future.
So we know that countries can set priorities, make
targets, use their talents in other areas to translate to
progress. So let’s study those examples and then act.
Today, energy access policies often concentrate on
electricity provision but not so much on clean fuels and
technologies for cooking. Let’s help policy makers
prioritize access to clean cooking and recognize that
investments in LPG, ethanol and natural gas for cooking
require long-term, “industry-building” perspectives. This
is where networks such as WLPGA and GLPGP can be
essential agents of change. Let’s prioritize, let’s act.
We also need to address direct polluting fuel subsidies
like those for kerosene. We need consumer education
campaigns that raise awareness about the health risks
linked to cooking. After all, cooking is baked into cultural
traditions, and these are not easy to alter – but when
mothers are informed on what will make the lives of their
children better, through better health, they do respond.
Ladies and gentlemen.
The task is to support and build vibrant markets for clean
fuels. To work with governments from an industry
perspective and with the development community to
ensure, through what we have learned through effective
social programs, conditional cash transfers and other
mechanisms, that the needs of those at the very bottom

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of the pyramid will be are met with a bundle of services.
Rather than trying to reach the poorest with education,
health, and subsidies for clean fuel separately, we can
bundle these packages.
We don’t expect the market to take care of the poorest of
the poor - this is going to be a public-private partnership
at the very bottom of the pyramid. Private investors will
need to be crowded in. It will require work with local
financiers, local banks to educate about market
opportunities, the introduction of appropriate consumer
finance tools and products in the market. Equity and
debt, work with the multilateral development banks and
bilateral agencies.
There is education to be done. We are talking about a big
market for clean fuels, not about accumulation of small
projects for cook stove models, it’s a shift in mindset.
Private investors need to be crowded in, to markets they
will be reluctant to enter, to a segment of population they
believe is too risky, and a development challenge they
may not have paid too much attention to. And you, as
LPG industrial experts have significant roles to play,
because we come from other areas from development
and look what has worked in supply chain financing,
distribution, consumption, to find new business and
financial models. There is a pent-up demand of patient
capital that wants to be part of the solution to allow 3
billion people to cook cleanly, and they are our potential
partner for this industry further down the line.
Let me give you an example. In Cameroon, the Global
LPG Partnership worked with the Government of
Cameroon to create the “National LPG Masterplan”.
Through a designated investment committee, they
prepared project investment of 403 million Euros to help
reach the government’s goal of providing access to LPG
for 58% of the population by 2030. This means that over
a 13-year period 3.5 million new households would have
access to clean cooking.
That’s 18 million new LPG users. It also means that
18,000 new jobs will be created. But far more

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importantly, it means that 30,000 lives will be saved
through reduction of household air pollution. It also
means that every year, between 2017 and 2030, 15
million trees will be saved, 3.4 million tons of CO2 will be
reduced. And $100 million of new economic activity will
be created across the value chain. Every year. From now
until 2030.
We can do this. But we need to think bigger.
I am here because I believe we can’t turn away from the
data. Those 3 billion people and their economic success is
a hugely exciting investment opportunity, and LPG is an
exceptional part of that opportunity.
I am here because the UN system believes there are
threads throughout the Sustainable Development Goals
that, if pulled, can propel us more quickly towards
success. Imagine if we can create vibrant markets for
clean fuels for the 20 countries where 84% where those 3
billion people live. We would be advancing progress on
the SDGs on health, poverty, women, children,
environment, deforestation, energy and climate.
This partnership, together with others that are committed
to this space, can actually do something that will lift up
everybody in the next 5 to 7 years.
Progress made to date is not good enough. I’m glad
you’re in this room but we have to leave this room and do
something different than what we were doing before.
I have a request and an offer.
My request, is that we organize ourselves better. WLGPA,
GLPG, the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves and
others, come together to one platform, one group, one
coalition, present ourselves uniformly to a subsection of
those 20 countries that want to move fastest and see if
we can come up collectively with a plan for a vibrant
market with all the financing and other pieces of the
puzzle that we will need, that can set real targets in
closing the gap of access to clean fuels. We can bring
others to the table if we act together with a plan.

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What I offer you is support in making investment
possible, marshalling the data and evidence, and
benchmark the progress. We release the GTF and RISE
which sets what countries have put in place to support
markets and what needs to be improved to grow those
markets quickly. And then we published the Energizing
Finance report to track the financial date into this space.
There are things we don’t know. Let’s ask different
questions and if we put different people together in the
room with us we will get different answers. Let’s work out
what the roadmaps is for the next 5 years. We will help.
And then we will convene, to create a neutral platform for
the difficult conversations about what it is going to take
to those countries that have the greatest access gap to
make progress quickly.
Finally, we tell stories of success so that LPG industry and
distributors in country or company ‘x’ can see what is so
transformative about what country or company ’y’ did.
This is an extraordinary source of energy at the exactly
right time and space. We shouldn’t be here in this moral
outrage where 3 billion people have to choose between
cooking a meal and the health of their children, but this is
where we stand. We have the data, what know what
needs to be served, we have the technologies, the
resources, let’s all do it together.
Thank you.
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