Two halves of one 2030 energy pledge have come apart: across 189 economies, electricity access outruns clean-cooking access in 183 — and Lao PDR wired nine homes for every one it gave a clean stove

The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 7, Target 7.1, commits governments to "ensure universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services" by 2030. That target is tracked with two official indicators: 7.1.1, the share of the population with access to electricity, and 7.1.2, the share primarily using clean fuels and technologies for cooking. The World Bank publishes both — indicator EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS (electricity) and EG.CFT.ACCS.ZS (clean cooking) — compiled from the Tracking SDG 7 / Energy Progress Report produced by the IEA, IRENA, the UN Statistics Division, the WHO and the World Bank. Both series were last updated 2026-07-13; the latest year with a clean-cooking figure for most economies is 2023. For nearly every economy these values are tracking estimates built from household surveys and modeling, not a household-by-household count; the figures below are those estimates ^mmodeled. This run pulled the full 2023 panel for both indicators, joined them to the World Bank's country-metadata endpoint to drop regional and income aggregates, and kept the economies carrying a 2023 value for both. That left 189 economies. Across those 189, electricity access is at or above clean-cooking access in 183, and strictly higher in 125 [verified as a count on the published series; the six exceptions all sit within 4.5 points of parity, so a revision could move the count — see Room for Disagreement]. The six economies where clean cooking leads do so only narrowly: Sudan (66.0% electricity vs 70.5% clean cooking), Panama (97.0 vs 100.0), South Africa (87.7 vs 89.8), Trinidad and Tobago (98.7 vs 100.0), Guyana (98.9 vs 100.0) and Syria (88.4 vs 88.8) ^mmodeled. Nowhere does clean cooking lead electricity by more than 4.5 percentage points; electricity leads by more than 80 in Lao PDR (+85.4) and Timor-Leste (+80.9) ^mmodeled. The world aggregate stands at 91.6% for electricity and 74.4% for clean cooking — a 17.2-point gap [modeled level; the difference is direct arithmetic]. The median economy's gap is 5.1 points, but the distribution has a long tail: 51 of the 189 economies show a gap of at least 30 points, and 20 show at least 50 [verified as counts on the series]. The widest belong to Lao PDR, which reports 96.5% electricity access against 11.1% clean-cooking access — a household there is about nine times as likely to have electricity as a clean stove — followed by Timor-Leste (100.0% vs 19.1%), Kiribati (95.9% vs 16.4%) and Comoros (89.8% vs 10.4%) ^mmodeled. Six economies are effectively fully electrified — 99% or more — yet report clean cooking in fewer than half of homes: Timor-Leste (100.0% / 19.1%), Bangladesh (99.5% / 28.4%), Sri Lanka (100.0% / 35.4%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (100.0% / 39.5%), Samoa (100.0% / 39.7%) and Guatemala (100.0% / 46.5%) ^mmodeled.

The following is analysis, not fact. A single-country energy desk files one of two stories: the grid reached the last village, or households still cook over smoke. Read all 189 economies' figures for both indicators in one pull and the two stories turn out to be the same story, and to run in a fixed direction. The first finding is that directionality. Electrification is not merely higher on average than clean cooking; it leads in almost every economy that has both numbers — 183 of 189, and by a wide margin in the tail [verified as a count on the series]. The reverse case barely exists: in the six economies where clean cooking is ahead, the margin never exceeds 4.5 points, while electricity's lead reaches into the 80s ^mmodeled. Two indicators of the same 2030 pledge, and one has consistently outrun the other. That asymmetry is what a whole-record read adds to the familiar "energy access is improving" headline: the improvement is lopsided, and it is lopsided the same way nearly everywhere. The second finding is where the two indicators come apart hardest. Extending a grid is a supply-side act a government or utility performs once per household; switching a family's primary cooking fuel is a recurring act that depends on the price of gas or electricity, a distribution network for cylinders, and a stove a household chooses to use daily. The gap between the two is therefore widest exactly where a wire arrived but a clean fuel did not: Lao PDR at 96.5% electricity and 11.1% clean cooking, Timor-Leste at 100.0% and 19.1%, Bangladesh at 99.5% and 28.4% ^mmodeled. Being connected to power is consistent with still cooking over wood or charcoal — the electricity indicator counts a connection, not what the household cooks on. The six fully electrified economies below 50% clean cooking are the clearest cases: universal power, and most kitchens still burning solid fuel or kerosene ^mmodeled. The third finding is scale versus typical experience, the same split that hides inside any global average. The world's 91.6%-versus-74.4% gap of 17.2 points understates the distance for the countries where the gap is the story, because the median economy's gap is only 5.1 points while 51 economies sit at 30 or more. The world figure is dominated by large, already-transitioned populations; the tail is where hundreds of millions still cook on fuels the WHO links to household air pollution. Both numbers are correct, and they answer different questions — how far the world has come, and how far the countries still short have to go.

The strongest caution is what the underlying number is. For almost every one of the 189 economies the 2023 value is a Tracking SDG 7 estimate assembled from surveys and modeling, not a tallied count, and estimates carry revision risk. That matters most at the margins this piece draws. The six economies where clean cooking leads electricity all sit within 4.5 points of parity, so the headline direction — electricity at or above clean cooking in 183 of 189 — is robust in its broad shape but not exact at the boundary; a routine revision could move the count by a few ^mmodeled. The threshold counts (51 economies at a 30-point gap, 20 at 50) are likewise counts on the published series, firm in magnitude and soft at the exact line. A second caution is definitional. The two indicators measure different things, and a gap between them is expected, not an anomaly: electricity access records whether a household is connected, while clean cooking records the primary fuel a household actually uses. A country can be fully electrified and still cook with wood because electric or gas cooking costs more per meal than free-collected biomass — so the gap reflects affordability and fuel supply, not a failure to build wires. Clean cooking here includes gas, LPG, electricity, biogas and other fuels the WHO classifies as clean; kerosene is excluded. A third: these counts are of economies, not people. The 189 include small island states alongside Bangladesh, so a population weighting would shift the emphasis toward the most populous low-clean-cooking economies (Bangladesh at 28.4%, and India and China, whose figures sit outside the six named here) rather than soften the picture ^mmodeled. Whether a given country's slow cooking-fuel transition reflects price, distribution, policy or preference is not something these two indicators can adjudicate; they record the split, not its cause.

From Sub-Saharan Africa the divergence narrows into shared deprivation. On the same 2023 series the region's aggregate electricity access is 53.3% and its clean-cooking access 22.8% ^mmodeled — both far below the world's 91.6% and 74.4%, and a gap of about 30 points that is itself larger than the global gap. Where richer regions show a wire that arrived ahead of a clean stove, much of the region is still short on both, and the clean-cooking figure is the lower of two low numbers. The World Bank and the IEA attribute the slower cooking transition across the region to fuel cost and distribution rather than to electrification lagging; the series records that both indicators sit low, not why either does.

An energy correspondent covers one country's grid or one country's kitchens. Reading both SDG-7 access indicators across all 189 economies at once shows the shape no single-country desk sees: that the two halves of the same 2030 pledge have not moved together, that electricity has outrun clean cooking in 183 of 189 economies and by more than 80 points in the widest cases, and that six countries have wired essentially every home while leaving most kitchens burning solid fuel — Lao PDR most starkly, with a household nearly nine times likelier to have power than a clean stove. The universal fact is that the world is electrifying. The fact only the whole record shows is that a connection and a clean meal are not the same promise, and the second one is the one still unkept.