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Floor Speech

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Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I rise today to introduce the Clean Cooking Support Act. I am pleased to be joined in this effort by my friend and colleague Senator Durbin. Our bill aims to address a serious global public health and environmental issue where leadership by the United States can make a real difference.

Today, more than 2 billion people, or 30 percent of the global population, rely on ``dirty cooking,'' such as open fires or inefficient, polluting, and unsafe cookstoves that use agricultural waste, coal, dung, or other solid fuels, to cook their meals. The majority of people using these types of cookstoves and fuels are in developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Exposure to smoke from these traditional cooking methods and open fires, referred to as household air pollution, can cause chronic and acute diseases such as lung cancer, heart disease, and stroke. Alarmingly, the household air pollution caused by traditional cookstoves and open fires leads to 3.2 million premature deaths annually, including 450,000 children younger than 5 years of age, most of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Women and girls are disproportionately affected, as they spend hours cooking, inhaling toxic smoke, and collecting fuels.

These cookstoves also create serious environmental problems. Household air pollution does not remain in the home; it contributes to global ambient air pollution. Specifically, more than half of manmade black carbon emissions come from household fuel combustion. Black carbon is a powerful short-lived climate pollutant with warming impact on the climate that is 460 to 1,500 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

These cookstoves should be replaced with modern alternatives to reverse these alarming health and environmental trends. Since 2010, the Clean Cooking Alliance, an innovative public-private partnership hosted by the United Nations Foundation, has supported the adoption of clean cooking worldwide. Recognizing the serious health and environmental issues posed by traditional cookstoves, the alliance aims to save lives, improve livelihoods, empower women, and combat pollution by creating a thriving global market for clean and efficient household cooking solutions.

Our legislation reinforces our country's policy on promoting clean cookstoves and seeks to take a whole-of-government approach to address household air pollution. Specifically, the Clean Cooking Support Act would create an interagency working group, with representatives from at least six different Federal Agencies, committed to increasing access to clean cooking fuels and technologies worldwide. Our legislation explicitly spells out the role of each Federal Agency in the advancement of clean cooking as well. The Department of Energy, for instance, is tasked with research and development to spur the production of low-cost, low-emission, and high-efficiency cookstoves, while the Department of State is directed to engage in diplomatic activities across the globe to support the clean cooking and fuels sector. Finally, our would authorize funding for the U.S. Government to continue such activities through 2028 to ensure that these important efforts to prevent unnecessary illness and reduce pollution around the globe continue.

Our legislation would directly benefit some of the world's poorest people, including the women and girls who are disproportionately affected, and reduce harmful pollution that affects us all. I urge my colleagues to join me and Senator Durbin in supporting the Clean Cooking Support Act. ______

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