By Ebriku John Friday
The Global LPG Partnership (GLPGP) and the African Refiners and Distributors Association (ARDA) announce their intention to raise a $1 billion fund to enable clean cooking with liquified petroleum gas (LPG) for millions of people ahead of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa.
This game-changing venture aims at stimulating and supporting rapid LPG sector development in Africa at scale, building on ARDA members’ distribution and human capacity and GLPGP’s LPG policy, regulatory and investment planning capability. The goal is to catalyze large-scale, private sector investment in both traditional LPG sector growth, and to realize the enormous potential of renewable LPG.
Kimball Chen, Executive Chairman of the Global LPG Partnership, said: “As we near the end date of the Sustainable Development Goals, over 2 billion people today still lack access to clean cooking solutions worldwide. The repercussions are both stark and preventable. 4 million lives, especially those of women, are lost to household air pollution from biomass cooking every year. 95% of these deaths take place in low and middle-income countries.
Combined with ambient air pollution, this entails a loss of 6% of global GDP every year- only compounding a vicious cycle of poor health, poor productivity and poverty. Beyond the health and economic burdens of unclean cooking, the environmental losses cannot be overstated. The demand for charcoal and firewood destroys forest areas the size of Ireland every year.
“The clarion call for clean cooking solutions has never been more urgent. LPG not only offers a lifeline to millions but also paves the way for a greener, more sustainable future. We urge global leaders, institutional donors and private stakeholders to seize this opportunity and commit to decisive action, safeguarding lives, livelihoods, and the environment.”
Anibor Kragha, ARDA Executive Secretary, said: “While the rest of the world has seen huge advances in universal clean cooking access, today, 4 in 5 Africans – roughly 1 billion people- still lack access to clean cooking. This remains not only one of the major barriers to achieving access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern access to energy on the continent, but also one of its greatest health, economic and environmental burdens.“
By the IEA’s own calculus, LPG is the primary solution to deliver clean cooking access by 2030. In the last decade, 70% of those who gained access to clean cooking did so through LPG. And yet, less than 30% of clean cooking plans in Africa are funded.
“As the first pan-African voice for the downstream oil sector, ARDA’s vision is not only to serve as a leader in strengthening Africa’s energy security, but also in its just transition to a renewable future. The level of funding and investment must meet the size of the challenge. This is why ARDA has joined forces with GLPGP to raise $1 billion in public and private financing to catalyze and scale LPG in the continent – the only practical, scalable and life-saving solution on the road to net zero.”
For enquiries, please contact us:Global LPG Partnership: info@glpgp.orgAfrican Refiners & Distributors Association: info@afrra.org
