Clean cooking: 1.5 billion more people since 2010
The Tracking SDG 7 report, signed by five international agencies, measures fifteen years of energy access: broad gains, gaps concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, financing declining toward the poorest countries.
What has improved. Since 2010, one and a half billion people have gained access to clean cooking systems and 800 million have gained access to electricity. This is established by the report Tracking SDG 7 – The Energy Progress Report, published on 24 June 2026 (WHO). Over the same period, the structure of electricity generation has changed: renewable sources cover over 30% of global electricity consumption and installed renewable capacity has reached the record value of 544 watts per inhabitant of the planet (World Bank). A second already-finalized figure comes from the International Energy Agency: in 2025 global coal generation fell by about 0.5%, the first decline since 2020 and the first outside crisis periods since 2015, while the year’s new renewable installations reached 800 gigawatts, three-quarters of which solar (IEA).
For whom. The improvement is not evenly distributed. Worldwide, 655 million people remain without access to electricity and about two billion cook with polluting fuels. The geographic concentration is clear: in sub-Saharan Africa alone, over 560 million people lack electricity and 970 million lack access to clean cooking (WHO). In other words: most of those still excluded live in the same region, and the progress of the last fifteen years has mostly reached elsewhere.
How we know this, and with what limits. The report is co-produced by five bodies — the International Energy Agency, IRENA, the Statistics Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the World Bank Group and the World Health Organization (SDG Knowledge Hub). These are the agencies tasked with monitoring Sustainable Development Goal 7, not the parties that build the plants nor the governments that claim credit for them: the certification is independent of those who derive reputational benefit from it. The data are aggregated by country and derive from national surveys with different consolidation timelines, so the reference year is not the same for all indicators (UN DESA).
The same report records contrary signals. The improvement in energy efficiency has slowed: from 2.4% in 2022 to 1.5% in 2023. And international public financial flows for clean energy directed to developing countries have remained substantially flat, from $24.4 billion in 2023 to $24.6 billion in 2024 (WHO).
The figure that weighs most heavily on the indicator’s future is the last one: toward the least developed countries, those where the 655 million without electricity are concentrated, the same flows fell by 11%, stopping at $3.7 billion in 2024 (World Bank).
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