Currently, nearly 2.3 billion people around the globe do not have access to clean cooking and are still dependent on the burning of biomass or open fires to cook their meals. Improved Cookstove and Clean Cookstove projects account for around 15% of projects in the voluntary carbon market, and are one of the most growing project typologies. Check out our article on how cookstoves support SDGs.
Cookstove projects achieve emissions reductions by working towards two main issues: black carbon emissions and deforestation emissions. Black carbon emissions are the sooty black material emitted from sources that burn fossil solid fuels (such as coal-first power plants, cool-powered stoves, and diesel engines, to name a few). In the case of stoves, fossil fuel combustion is targeted for household energy needs. With improved cookstove and clean cookstove projects being more efficient in combustion than the traditional stove previously used, they emit less black carbon emissions and require less wood for cooking, therefore helping to mitigate deforestation.
However, these cookstove projects do not all look the same, and are divided into two categories: improved efficiency cookstoves and fuel-switching cookstoves. The next sections will describe their differences and subcategories. For more information on the various types of carbon avoidance credits, please read our article.
This type of cookstove project is the one most commonly found in the voluntary carbon market. It looks to replace the traditional cookstoves with more efficient technology, while relying on its traditional biomass for fuel. For example, replacing an open flame cookstove with a covered one that makes better use of the heat it generates. The stoves will still use firewood or charcoal, but more efficiently, lessening the amount of fuel needed to be sourced and the time spent cooking. By better encapsulating the fire, these types of cookstoves lower the family’s exposure to soot and smoke, creating better air quality and improving health conditions.
Within this category, there are different types of cookstoves on the market. These include:
For fixed improved cookstoves, they are built on site in the homes or institutions and often from locally sourced materials such as bricks, mud or clay. These fixed improved cookstoves can also include a chimney to help draw the smoke outside of the home and ensure proper ventilation. Portable stoves are often made from clay or metal and are more standardized in their design. They also consume less fuel than fixed stoves as their size is smaller, taking less time to heat up. However, fixed stoves, being higher in mass, keep the heat for longer; once their mass is heated, locals can keep the heat for longer for ingredients that require several hours to prepare and simmer.
There is also the difference in how projects manage the quality control aspect of these stoves. Fixed stoves require outreach into the local’s home or in the institution they are based in, making this be a big and time consuming task. Portable stoves can be brought to their point of sale to be managed, checked and monitored in case of any issues.
ClimateSeed is working with a fixed cookstove program in Peru. The program is implemented in more than 130,000 rural Andean households in 9 regions of Peru. Fixed cookstoves are distributed for free to communities living 2,500m above sea level in remote areas with limited energy access. Cookstoves are installed tailored to the needs of the families to respect traditional cooking habits. If you are interested in learning more or contributing to this project, please contact us here.
While most cookstove projects look to improve the efficiency of traditional cookstoves so that they use less fuel to cook, fuel-switching cookstove projects look at powering through alternative fuel types, such as liquified petroleum gas (LPG), bioethanol, solar cooking, and electricity. The idea is to replace the traditional fuel with a “cleaner” fuel type, classifying these projects as clean cookstoves. These types of projects score very well in additionality as without carbon finance, the financial barrier would remain too high for families to adopt this fuel-switch without project support. These cookstoves also produce less CO2 emissions compared to cookstoves that burn biomass.
Within this category, there are different types of cookstoves on the market. These include:
Clean cookstove projects have evolved over the past few years, so much so that the World Bank developed a multi-tier framework (MTF) for cooking. Their MTF looks at six different levels of cooking solutions, starting with Tiers 0-1 (no access), Tiers 2-3 (access to improved cooking solutions), and ending with Tiers 4-5 (access to modern energy cooking solutions). The solutions that meet the tier 4-5 criteria are LPG stoves, electric stoves, bioethanol stoves, and biogas stoves.
For more information on household communities and biogas in the VCM, please read our article.
Projects that use LPG (liquefied gas) often find that its adoption is hindered by financial constraints, cultural barriers, or a lack of distribution networks. However, once adopted, its benefits are grand. Besides the health benefits that both improved cookstoves and clean cookstoves provide, LPG cookstove projects are less carbon-intensive (while still being a fossil fuel) and are more energy efficient than cookstoves using wood or charcoal. They also reduce pressure on remaining forest reserves as they do not rely on traditional biomass.
Projects that use bioethanol can get their resources from crops like sugarcane, sugar beet, cassava, corn, and other sugar or starch crops. Bioethanol cookstoves provide a non-fossil fuel solution to households as opposed to LPG stoves. However, due to its supply chain complexity, there are few projects in the market that use this technology.
ClimateSeed is working with a bioethanol program in Kenya. The program delivers at scale sustainably and locally-sourced bioethanol to urban households for cooking purposes and transitions them away from deforestation-based charcoal use. The project developer operates a renewable fuel utility that leverages existing liquid fuels infrastructures and climate finance to deliver clean, safe, and modern fuels at scale to urban populations in Kenya. If you are interested in learning more or contributing to this project, please contact us here.
While there are many different types of cookstove projects out there, this article was written not to compare one against the other, but to show how cookstove projects have evolved over the years and what innovations are accessible. One thing is clear, all projects are working towards the same goal: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve the health of concerned communities, and contribute to gender equality. Everyone has the right to cook and feed their families in a healthy and safe way.
If you would be interested in contributing to cookstove projects or learning more about the large variety of our cookstove projects, in Africa, South America, and Asia, feel free to contact us. For more information on why avoidance credits are not inherently inferior to removal ones, please read our article.
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