"An Energy Market Issue That Deserves Real Investment" Featuring Jillene Connors Belopolsky, Clean Cooking Alliance

Today we had the pleasure of welcoming Jillene Connors Belopolsky, Chief of Staff and Chief External Affairs Officer at the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA), to our Houston studio. Jillene joined the CCA in 2021 and has over a decade of experience in energy sustainability, strategy, and innovation. She previously served as Head of North America for Earth Security Group and in several senior roles at BP, where she developed strategies addressing the environmental and societal impacts of technology, climate change, and carbon management. Established in 2010, the CCA works to enable, influence, and accelerate local transitions to clean cooking solutions globally by supporting governments, unlocking and diversifying funding, strengthening enterprises, and fostering a harmonized, resilient ecosystem. We were thrilled to hear Jillene’s insights on this important and often overlooked issue.
 
In our conversation, Jillene shares an overview of the CCA’s mission, scope, and focus on energy poverty, as well as her personal journey in becoming interested in working to alleviate energy poverty to enable people to live the best lives of their own choosing. We discuss the importance of energy access for prosperity, the scale of the challenge with 675 million people without electricity and 2.1 billion relying on polluting cooking fuels, and the health, environmental, and economic impacts of lacking clean cooking solutions, as well as why clean cooking is often overlooked despite its broad benefits. Jillene walks us through the CCA’s range of solutions including induction stoves, improved biomass stoves, LPG with PAYGO models, ethanol solutions, and domestic biogas systems, alongside financing models and clean cooking performance standards. We explore ecosystem participants, from stove and fuel manufacturers to distributors and technology providers, as well as innovations such as smart metering, fuel ATMs, e-cooking tariffs, and monitored biogas systems. We touch on different LPG delivery methods, why Kenya is a leading example due to its prioritized clean cooking policies and regulatory environment, the $8.5 billion annual funding gap for deploying clean cooking solutions, the capital mix needed, government and international support, and opportunities to harmonize taxes and tariffs, build trade, and scale solutions across East and West Africa. Additionally, we discuss how businesses and individuals can support clean cooking solutions, the importance of a diverse mix of approaches, and clean cooking’s immediate, cost-effective benefits for health, environment, and energy access. We cover the necessity of government leadership in creating an enabling environment for clean cooking access and economic development, why a combined government-private sector approach is needed in Africa, the urgent need for private sector involvement to accelerate progress, the strategic opportunity for energy companies to leverage their expertise and resources to support clean cooking initiatives, and much more. It was a thought-provoking discussion and we’re very grateful to Jillene for sharing her expertise with us. For additional information on the CCA, their 2024 Annual Report is linked here.
 
Mike Bradley kicked off the show by noting the 10-year bond yield (~4.3%) was unchanged as July CPI reported in-line with expectations. July PPI is due Wednesday, and if it also reports in-line, markets will be anticipating the first of three interest rates cuts for 2025 at the September FOMC Meeting. Initial Jobless Claims, Retail Sales, and Consumer Sentiment reports are all set to report later this week. The S&P 500 rallied ~1% on Tuesday mostly due to the in-line CPI print. Equity markets over the next few months will likely be more driven by economic/world events than equity fundamentals. The path of least resistance still looks up and to the right,