Clean energy access remains one of the most pressing challenges in sub-Saharan Africa, especially when it comes to clean cooking. Despite technological progress, more than 2 billion people around the world still lack access to clean cooking solutions. The consequences are severe: air pollution, deforestation, poor health outcomes, and disproportionate burdens on women and children.
This is not a marginal issue. Access to clean cooking is a specific sub-target of SDG7, and one that remains badly off track according to both the IEA and the World Bank’s Tracking SDG7 reports. Unsustainable cooking with wood and charcoal is one of the key drivers of forest degradation, and causes ca. 1.7 Gton of CO2eq emissions every year – more than the total emissions of the entire fossil-based hydrogen industry.
In refugee settlements and surrounding host communities, the challenge is even more acute. Cooking often still relies on wood, charcoal, or other biomass, leading to unsafe conditions and unsustainable practices. Infrastructure is limited, power is unreliable, and the ripple effects – from food spoilage to economic stagnation – are deeply felt.
That’s why Solhyd is proud to be a technology partner in SUNNY, a Horizon Europe project focused on deploying modular, renewable energy systems in Uganda and Rwanda. The initiative brings together a broad coalition to co-develop sustainable energy solutions for refugee and host communities: from solar power and storage, to clean cooking and refrigeration systems.
Hydrogen in SUNNY: beyond emission reductions
Within the SUNNY project, Solhyd contributes to the hydrogen-based cooking component, one of several clean cooking technology options, alongside solar, biogas and electric systems.
While clean cooking may not be the primary use case for our technology, we’re one of the few who can offer a unique opportunity to enable this use case. Our modular, standalone technology allows for off-grid solar hydrogen production, solving the challenges of fuel distribution. Working with local and international partners, we help develop hydrogen modules that are safe, functional, and culturally adapted to local practices, in environments where energy infrastructure is often minimal or improvised.
Hydrogen clean cooking offers tremendous potential for societal impact, which is why we’ve chosen to keep exploring this avenue. Together with our partner Solhydair Foundation, we want to contribute practical solutions for a global challenge in which conventional approaches have, so far, fallen short. Our involvement in SUNNY reflects a broader commitment: developing hydrogen technologies that serve people, not just export strategies. While much of the global hydrogen narrative focuses on molecules flowing from south to north, our work in Uganda and Rwanda is grounded in local needs.
This isn’t about showcasing a novelty. It’s about asking the right questions: Can hydrogen be a viable part of clean cooking in off-grid communities? Under which conditions? What infrastructure and training are needed to make it work safely?
SUNNY gives us a real-world setting to explore those questions, with partners who understand the local context and share a long-term vision for sustainable impact.
Learning from a new context
For us, participating in SUNNY is not a side project. It’s a valuable opportunity to test and refine our technology under conditions that leave no room for fragility.
Remote communities in the Global South present a distinct set of challenges: limited infrastructure, high exposure to dust and weather, complex logistics, and constrained access to spare parts. These are stress tests that help us evolve our technology. We’re learning how to enhance robustness, circularity, and repairability. Not in theory, but through hands-on deployment.
This kind of field experience informs how we design, build, and support our systems, across all markets. It sharpens the reliability of our technology and reinforces the adaptability of our modular approach.
Over the coming years, SUNNY will continue to develop and test integrated energy solutions in Rwanda and Uganda. Solhyd’s contribution on solar hydrogen technology will feed directly into our broader roadmap: robust and sustainable technology, emissions reductions, and new applications for our hydrogen modules.
