The move deepens the Agency’s leadership on clean cooking, enhancing in-country delivery and establishing a dedicated multilateral forum on the topic.
At its 2026 Ministerial Meeting, the IEA announced that its Member governments have approved hosting the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) as a multilateral initiative. The IEA and CCA will partner with governments and industry to tackle one of the world’s most pressing development challenges through strengthened in-country policy support, enhanced coordination with industry and the mobilisation of additional investment.
IEA analysis shows that more than 2 billion people lack access to clean cooking, relying instead on wood, charcoal, and other polluting fuels that pose serious health risks. The problem is most acute in Africa, where four in five households still lack access. The absence of clean cooking contributes to 2.5 million premature deaths annually, primarily affecting women and children, and requires families to spend an average of nearly four hours per day gathering fuel and preparing meals. It is also a major driver of deforestation.
The CCA, founded in 2010, works to accelerate universal access to clean cooking by partnering on the ground with government and industry to strengthen markets and develop enabling policy and regulatory frameworks. A core pillar of its approach is the Delivery Unit model, which embeds clean cooking experts within national institutions to accelerate policy development and programme implementation.
“By integrating the Clean Cooking Alliance into the IEA, together we will be the principal multilateral forum for accelerating clean cooking efforts with countries and industry,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “This builds on the IEA’s leadership in data and analysis, enhancing on-the-ground delivery capacity on a fundamental energy injustice that affects the world’s most vulnerable people.”
“This partnership between CCA and IEA firmly roots clean cooking within the core architecture of global energy planning, analysis, convening and investment dialogue,” said CCA CEO Dymphna van der Lans. “It strengthens our collective ability to connect ambition with execution and enables CCA to engage more deeply with the multilateral processes, regional bodies, national governments and private sector actors who can unlock clean cooking transitions as scale.”
The announcement comes as the IEA prepares to host its second major international Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, which will take place in Nairobi on 9-10 July, 2026 co-chaired by President William Ruto of Kenya, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway, United States Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.
The first Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa took place in Paris in May 2024, bringing together five heads of state and over 20 ministers, and attended by more than 1000 delegates from 60 countries. The Summit mobilised $2.2 billion in financial pledges from governments and the private sector. In July 2025, the IEA published an update report showing that more than USD 470 million of the commitments from the Paris Summit had already been disbursed. The update also set out a new roadmap for a cost-effective pathway to achieving universal access to clean cooking across sub-Saharan Africa by 2040.
The announcement at the IEA’s 2026 Ministerial was made during a High-level Dialogue on Advancing Energy Access and Clean Cooking Solutions, co-led by Ministers of Energy from Kenya, Norway, and the United States. The session, attended by 30 countries, focused on concrete priorities ahead of the Summit. Countries welcomed the decision to integrate the CCA into the IEA and were invited join the new version of the CCA as member countries in the coming months.