The COP31 Presidency and the International Energy Agency (IEA) have announced a landmark strategic partnership aimed at delivering a focused, credible, and results-driven energy transition strategy ahead of this year’s global climate summit in Antalya, Türkiye.
The partnership, unveiled ahead of a High-Level Energy Transition Dialogue at IEA headquarters in Paris, signals a sharpened focus on translating climate commitments into concrete action — with clean cooking emerging as one of the most urgent and tangible priorities on the agenda.
Both institutions describe this alliance as a pivotal moment in energy history. The ongoing global energy crisis, rather than hindering the push for renewables, has created powerful market forces that the partnership aims to harness to accelerate the switch to clean energy.
Central to this agenda is the issue of clean cooking, which affects over 2.3 billion people globally who depend on conventional stoves burning wood, coal, and other dirty fuels in their homes. Organisers warn that the energy crisis threatens to reverse years of hard-won progress in this area, potentially forcing millions of families back to polluting cooking methods with devastating consequences for health, the environment, and development.
During the Paris dialogue, COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum committed to placing clean cooking access at the very centre of the global climate agenda this year, emphasising that the scale of the challenge can no longer be treated as a secondary concern.
The clean cooking crisis disproportionately affects sub-Saharan Africa and developing Asia, where the vast majority of those without access to clean cooking solutions reside. Organisers stressed that clean cooking interventions are among the lowest-cost actions available to policymakers, delivering a wide range of co-benefits across environmental protection, public health, and broader development goals.
The COP31 Presidency framed the clean cooking initiative as a direct expression of its commitment to delivering tangible, measurable progress for developing countries, particularly for Africa, by the time delegates gather in Antalya later this year.
The Paris event marked the first in a series of High-Level Energy Transition Dialogues that the COP31 Presidency and the IEA will co-host in the months leading up to the summit. The dialogues are designed to bring together decision-makers and thought leaders from across the world to debate the Presidency’s strategic priorities and build the political momentum needed to deliver results at COP31.
The opening segment of Tuesday’s dialogue, livestreamed on the IEA website, featured remarks by IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol and COP31 President-Designate Kurum, alongside Türkiye’s Minister of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change and other senior climate leaders.
Fatih Birol, whose agency has long championed the acceleration of clean energy transitions globally, lent significant institutional weight to the partnership’s ambitions. The IEA’s analytical expertise and global convening power are set to underpin the Presidency’s delivery strategy across multiple energy transition workstreams.
Beyond clean cooking, the COP31 Presidency-IEA partnership is expected to drive progress across a broad range of energy transition priorities identified as key outcomes for this year’s summit. These include scaling renewable energy deployment, reforming energy subsidies, mobilising clean energy finance for developing nations, and strengthening energy security frameworks in a volatile global landscape.
For the millions of families in Africa and Asia still cooking over open fires, the message from Paris was clear: their plight is no longer on the margins of the climate conversation. Under the COP31 Presidency, it sits squarely at its centre.
COP31 is scheduled to take place in Antalya, Türkiye, later this year.
