OPINION: Excluding poorest is not the answer to over-crediting in the cookstoves sector

Quantum Commodity Intelligence – Christa Roth works for Food and Fuel Consultants, Omar Masera is professor at the Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Priyadarshini Karve is director of Samuchit Enviro Tech, and Conor Fox is a director at Hestian.

The Cleaner Cooking Coalition is driven by a single goal; to make sustainable cooking energy accessible for all – leaving no-one behind.

We appreciate the critical examination of current stove carbon offset programmes as presented in the paper "Pervasive over-crediting from cookstove offset methodologies" by Annelise Gill-Wiehl, Daniel Kammen, and Barbara Haya.

We agree that there is an urgent need for improvement in approved methodologies, as many projects are currently over-crediting.

It is crucial that new methodologies are based on conservative estimates of critical parameters such as the fraction of non-renewable biomass, stacking, or leakage.

We also acknowledge that this issue extends beyond cookstove projects and affects the entire verified carbon market (VCM) space. However, we have serious concerns about some of the paper's recommendations.

Firstly, recommending that "VCMs exclusively fund WHO-defined clean stoves" may not align with the SE4All motto of Leave No-One Behind (LNOB) and pro-poor interventions in line with Sustainable Development Goal 7 to create universal access, especially for the poorest populations who cannot afford the transition to cleaner technologies at market conditions.

This vulnerable population is disproportionately impacted by climate change but bears the least responsibility.

Secondly, prioritising metered fuel switch projects may not be applicable for collected fuel, which is most prevalent among the poorest populations and is unlikely to change significantly for many years.

This approach could further exclude the bottom of the pyramid from benefiting from carbon finance, leaving behind a significant portion of rural households, such as in Malawi, where approximately 85% rely on collected firewood.

We recommend that carbon offset programmes include interventions that help transition towards cleaner cooking solutions and deliberately incorporate appropriate, proven solutions that meet local needs.

Many improved biomass stoves have demonstrated tangible local and environmental benefits and address populations that cannot afford or access market fuels, such as LPG or electricity, on a sustained basis.

Additionally, we advocate for building a localised understanding of cooking systems to move the sector towards true net zero and clean cooking.

The cooking sector requires a high level of local customisation in both greenhouse gas emissions calculation methodologies and health impact assessment methodologies.

Finally, we recommend the establishment of a working group comprising international researchers to suggest changes to methodologies and incorporate more localised, realistic values based on on-the-ground data from different geographical locations.

This collaborative effort can bring emissions reduction calculations closer to reality.