2026-08-22 · people

One in three still cook with polluting fuels

Indoor air pollution from solid fuels remains a silent killer in many homes.

One in three people worldwide — roughly 2.7 billion — still cook with wood, charcoal, coal, dung, or crop residues, filling their homes with smoke linked to pneumonia, stroke, heart disease, and lung cancer. The other 67% have access to clean fuels such as gas or electricity. This grid shows how the world splits on clean cooking in 2026.

1 cell = 8.2 million people (0.1% of world population) · 1,000 cells

Context

Progress has been substantial but slow: around 2000, only about half the world's population cooked with clean fuels, a share that has since climbed to roughly two-thirds. Even so, the total number of people without clean cooking fuels has declined only gradually since 2000.

The burden falls unevenly across regions and incomes. Access to clean fuels remains very low across Sub-Saharan Africa, while South and East Asia have seen the most significant gains over the past decade. In high-income countries, cooking with solid fuels is entirely a thing of the past.

The smoke from burning solid fuels is a significant risk factor for deaths and illness from indoor air pollution. The remedy, in principle, is straightforward: shift households to modern energy sources such as natural gas, ethanol, or electric cooking.

IEA / WHO clean cooking access shares.