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Wright Delivers Remarks at the IEA Clean Cooking in Africa Event, Jul. 9, 2026

July 9, 2026 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:07:40

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright delivered remarks at the International Energy Agency’s event on clean cooking in Africa, in the Department of Energy’s upload of the July 9, 2026 session. Wright thanked Kenyan President William Ruto for his leadership on clean cooking fuel access and called Kenya’s targets a model for other nations, and thanked Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre for his comments at the event.

Wright described the clean cooking problem in the terms he said he has used for decades: two to three million deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization figures he cited, among roughly two billion people — about half of them in Africa — who still cook with traditional fuels. He called it “the world’s largest solvable problem” and urged the IEA to expand its energy security mission to encompass it “with urgency, with words and with action,” arguing that delivery would run mostly through small and mid-size businesses building distribution networks, as he presented it.

Why it matters

This is the July companion to Wright’s September IEA clean cooking remarks: the same energy-poverty argument, made earlier and at greater length — that energy security is not only about wealthy nations’ oil supply, the IEA’s founding concern, but about the quarter of humanity still cooking the way their ancestors did.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright Joins International Energy Agency’s Event on Clean Cooking in Africa” (official upload, embedded above; remarks as delivered by Secretary Wright).