Oil and gas giants TotalEnergies, bp, Equinor, and Shell have pledged $500 million to improve access to affordable energy, with a primary focus on sub-Saharan Africa and south and southeast Asia.

This investment represents approximately 0.7% of the nearly $70 billion in net profits these companies collectively earned in 2023.

The announcement was made during the UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where discussion has focused on raising $1 trillion in climate finance from richer nations to assist developing countries in their energy transition and climate resilience efforts.

According to Reuters, the $500 million will be distributed over several years through tenders for projects across the energy value chain.

That will include domestic solar energy systems, micro-electricity grids, energy production, transport, logistics and storage, e-mobility technologies, and modern cooking fuels such as liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, south and southeast Asia.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), over 2.3 billion people around the world still rely on traditional stoves that burn wood, charcoal, and animal dung for cooking, resulting in health problems.

“It is early, but we hope that by jointly investing, we will be able to contribute to wider efforts to tackle the very real challenge of access to energy,” said bp CEO Murray Auchincloss.

Earlier this year TotalEnergies announced a separate $400 million investment to develop LPG for cooking in Africa and India through 2030.