Mr. Jossy Thomas serves as an Industrial Development Officer and leads the Bioenergy Programme at the Just Energy Transition Unit of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). With over 25 years of international technical cooperation experience with UN-ESCAP and UNIDO, he has been actively involved in promoting universal energy access in developing countries. Currently, his focus lies on scaling up modern clean cooking solutions in developing countries and coordinating the Secretariat of the Council On Ethanol Clean Cooking (CECC), a network platform comprising 21 member countries dedicated to clean cooking initiatives.

We dive deep into international development efforts in this episode, hearing about Jossy’s start with UNIDO developing some of the first mini-grids in Nigeria at the forefront of the clean energy transition. Today, UNIDO is supporting, among many of their efforts, bioethanol cooking projects, and we will hear about the program in Tanzania, as well as the new endeavor in Madagascar. We will also discuss why clean cooking transitions are so difficult and outline the three top opportunities to make a meaningful shift toward access to these technologies. Lastly, we will learn a little more about the Council on Ethanol Clean Cooking - a new initiative started at COP28, as well as recent global movement in clean cooking commitments, motivated by a Clean Cooking in Africa Summit, hosted by the IEA this month. It’s a packed episode with insights from an industry veteran that you won’t want to miss!