Dual-path clean cooking sustainability in Uganda: Multi-criteria analysis and policy insights (2024 – 2050)

Uganda's long-term clean cooking transition requires technology choices that balance energy demand, affordability, health, forest conservation, and climate impacts while accounting for cookstove stacking. This study models the sustainability impacts of eight improved and modern cookstoves: wood rocket, wood fan, improved charcoal, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), pellet gasifier, parabolic solar, electric pressure cooker, and biogas under exclusive-use and stacking scenarios from 2024 to 2050. A multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) framework integrating thirteen sustainability indicators and seven decision-ranking methods was applied to evaluate cookstove performance. Relative to the traditional three-stone fire, the cookstoves in the present study reduced modelled household cooking energy demand by approximately 65 – 82%, although climate, forest, health, and affordability outcomes varied substantially. Electric cooking generated the greatest modelled health benefits, while solar cooking provided the greatest potential for forest conservation. Stacking LPG with charcoal reduced the modelled climate mitigation benefit by approximately 54% relative to exclusive LPG use and remained burdensome for low-income households. Across the MCDA methods, solar consistently ranked highest, while electric and biogas also showed favourable sustainability performance, although rankings were conditional on the selected indicators, weights, and model assumptions. The findings support a differentiated clean cooking transition in which cookstove deployment considers local electricity access, fuel and resource availability, affordability, and household cooking needs while reducing continued dependence on polluting biomass. The framework provides a transferable approach for evaluating clean cooking transition pathways, although locally representative data and spatially disaggregated assessments are needed to inform context-specific deployment priorities.