New research suggests the potential long-term economic fallout from the pandemic and possible fuel price spikes caused by climate mitigation policies might further stymie the global initiative to achieve universal clean cooking in upcoming decades. To examine global access to clean cooking by 2050, the researchers constructed three types of simulations: baseline scenarios, a slow economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic scenario assuming a 20-year recovery period, and ambitious climate mitigation policy scenarios set to limit global warming to below 2 °C by the end of the century.