Hydrogen for cooking: Mapping multi-level transition outcomes and preemptive policy pathways through stakeholder engagement in Zambia

Clean cooking transitions are context specific due to the challenges and opportunities they present in shifting from traditional biomass and fossil fuels. This study explored hydrogen for cooking in Zambia to understand how stakeholders judge its benefits and risks (n = 14 organisations). A systems-thinking lens was applied to theorize and map interdependencies across social, economic, and technical benefits. Qualitative insights were combined with a transparent scoring approach and non-parametric bootstrapping to show uncertainty around rankings. The findings revealed that stakeholders view hydrogen cooking as a catalyst for socio-economic progress and environmental gains. They also flag major hurdles: livelihood disruption during transition, affordability, cultural acceptance, infrastructure readiness, and fragmented policies. These findings point to early, targeted interventions that anticipate and mitigate potential externalities. Priorities include alternative income support where livelihoods may shift, community engagement to build acceptance, technical training to reduce reliance on external expertise, and supply chain development to ensure reliability. Across options, respondents give more weight to social benefits than to purely technical or economic performance of energy systems. A multi-criteria decision-making approach, informed by stakeholder-derived weights highlights where preferences converge at small scale and diverge at larger scale. The study contributes a context-sensitive approach that integrates stakeholder analysis with systems thinking. It foregrounds interdependencies, explicitly accommodates uncertainty, and places communities at the centre of clean-cooking strategies, offering guidance for implementation in similar settings. • Acceptance is driven by equity, access and affordability. • Stakeholder elicited systems thinking maps feedback loops in Zambia's H₂ cooking. • Preemptive policy actions mitigate social and adoption risks. • Socio-economic benefits rank above techno-economic factors in preferences. • Stakeholder perspectives drive different rankings for small vs large-scale systems.