- Date
- 25th October 2024
By Malcolm Bricknell and Professor Matt Leach (Modern Energy Cooking Services Programme).
Carbon Credits have become increasingly important as a source of funding to enable the transition to clean cooking to occur. Clean cooking emission reductions (ERs) have very high positive impacts across a range of SDGs in addition to their carbon reduction benefits. However, certification procedures have been complex and the integrity of some traditional certification methodologies based around surveys and sampling has been challenged, leading to claims that some projects receive credits for greater carbon reduction than the project delivers.
Digital Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (dMRV) is an approach for organisations to accurately measure, report, and verify these emissions using digital data and methods. These approaches leverage advanced technology and data-driven solutions to enhance transparency, accountability and efficiency in carbon accounting processes 1. The opportunities around digital technology have been widely recognised and commented on. For example, a report produced by the World Bank a little while ago pointed out the outstanding opportunities created by dMRV solutions. Modern energy cooking projects have in fact been one of the most pioneering sectors in introducing digital methodologies. A more detailed explanation of how these procedures work in practice for cooking projects, is set out in an article we have recently produced.
In October 2021, following their acceptance of new procedures proposed by Climate Impact Partners and MECS, the Gold Standard approved a new methodology allowing for certification of their Verified Emission Reductions (VERs): Methodology for Metered & Measured Energy Cooking Devices (MMECD). The MMECD methodology is designed for cookstoves with metered or other direct fuel measurement (for example fuel purchase records) such as electric, LPG, biogas, bioethanol or advanced biomass pellet stoves. Calculations are based on the actual energy used by project participants when cooking with the appliances, electronically measured in the home or at point of fuel sale and with data collected remotely, with conservative assumptions for how much traditional cooking fuel use is thereby avoided. This allows for a highly efficient process for calculating emission reductions and is much more accurate, as it is based on actual energy used not on surveys (which are prone to biases) and statistical approximations. If applied to every stove or fuel unit distributed by a project, MMECD can also eliminate the need for sampling – providing even more rigour and reliability for the resulting emission reductions. Other Standards are following the example of Gold Standard, and it is likely that these new digital methodologies will become well established and offer attractive possibilities for MEC projects to generate high integrity carbon credits.
Gold Standard has now started a pilot programme to test digital Measurement, Reporting and Verification (dMRV) solutions as part of its plans for end-to-end digitisation of climate and sustainable development impact certification. Running until October 2026, it will assess the potential of digital technologies to enhance the accuracy, transparency, and efficiency of monitoring and reporting for carbon credits and verified impacts under Gold Standard for the Global Goals (GS4GG).
How does dMRV work for cooking projects?
Under the MMECD or equivalent metered methodology, a monitoring device records the energy consumption of the clean cookstove. This either requires measurement of the mass of the fuel used (for LPG or advanced biofuel cookstoves) or monitoring of the electricity consumption (for an electric cookstove). Electricity consumption can be monitored in different ways, either metering electricity use directly, or metering power and the length of time the cookstove is used, with energy calculated by integrating the power consumption within the time period. The data from these monitoring devices can be sent directly to an online database, (e.g., through a GSM mobile data chip in the cookstove) or can be collected locally and aggregated via additional device(s) (such as a USB drive or smartphone), which then sends the data to the online database.
Advantages of using digital methodologies
In non-metered clean cooking activities, a random sample of project cookstoves is periodically selected for monitoring and verification. Standards require that samples are representative of the population and that the data should be unbiased and reliable. However, there are integrity risks that high usage households could be preferentially selected into the chosen sample. The sampling problem is compounded under survey-based methods due to “desirability bias”. Digital methodologies do not need to rely on such surveys to demonstrate MEC device uptake and usage. They directly track project stove and fuel use in participating households through meters or fuel sales data. They also do not require the estimation of “stacking” – the use of additional cookstoves or fuels in addition to the project device – as they calculate emission reductions based on accurate measurements of actual project fuel usage, and evidence of the traditional fuel use in the baseline that is avoided.
A further significant advantage of real-time data will be the ability of certification bodies to speed up the issuance of credits which will then allow project developers to access funds faster with consequent improvements to cash flow. Other cost reduction benefits should occur from facilitating the validation and verification processes required by certification bodies, as the relevant organisations (VVBs) involved in checking the integrity of these results will be able to conduct checks at a system level rather than needing to check particular survey results presented.
Examples of dMRV projects
ATEC Global was one of the earliest project developers to certify a project with Gold Standard using the MMECD, for induction cookstoves in Bangladesh and Cambodia. Together with the efforts of other pioneering project developers they have effectively demonstrated the technical and commercial viability of the new methodology.
EcoSafi provides an advanced gasifier to customers who purchase its sustainable biomass fuel pellets. Its project in Kenya (GS11352) was the second issuance under the MMECD globally and the first in Africa. By digitally tracking and verifying fuel sales for and assigning individual baselines to each of its customers, EcoSafi has addressed the challenge of over-crediting risk and generated high integrity credits. Consequently, it has received the rating agency BeZero Carbon’s first ‘A’ or higher rating for cookstoves.
BURN Manufacturing is using the metered methodology to scale electric cooking across Africa. BURN’s ECOA cookers are GSM enabled and transmit real-time electric power consumption data to BURN’s proprietary data management software, “ECOA Nexus”. The technology uses real-time monitoring of energy consumed to cook to generate accurate measurement of emission reductions. This data management system enables 100% metering under Gold Standard’s Metered Methodology (MMECD) and also allows for instalment financing on Pay-as-You-Cook (PAYC).
UpEnergy is leading what is currently the largest bilateral compliance electric cooking initiative in Ghana. Using the MMECD as a foundation, the project aims to deploy 200,000 electric stoves in Ghana over the next three years. This effort is part of UpEnergy’s broader expansion of zero-emission electric stoves across Sub-Saharan Africa, with additional projects in Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia.
SDG Impact Co-benefits
One reason for the popularity of the Gold Standard VERs is their well-developed methodology for certifying non-carbon Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) impacts (co-benefits), which help projects command higher prices for their VERs.
Most cooking projects to date have measured these benefits rather superficially at the activity level rather than at the outcome and impact levels due to the cost and complexity of analysing these impacts in more detail and the limited levels of information required to date by offset buyers. A major obstacle to better reporting of co-benefits has been the administrative costs of measuring and demonstrating these SDG impacts. Digital technology can play an important role in enabling reporting at a wholly different level to earlier practices, especially where impact measurement can “piggyback” off the data platform required for carbon credit certification.
Challenges in using cooking methodologies
The calculation of emission reductions depends on a number of parameters other than fuel/electricity consumption which can have a material impact on the overall outcome of the emission calculation. A notable example of this is the fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB) that determines the non-renewable part of the traditional biomass displaced by the project, which is the portion that contributes to the emission reductions generated. This affects projects of any sort that involve biomass and forestry, not just cooking, and appropriate and conservative benchmarking is required to maintain reporting integrity. Detailed research and consultation in this area is ongoing, coordinated through the UNFCCC, and results around this could be expected as soon as end 2024, which should address this issue for the whole sector.
The cost of monitoring equipment, data communication, IT systems and database storage has been highlighted as a significant challenge to the implementation of dMRV systems, although equipment prices are dropping with economies of scale. Alongside digital data collection, site visits may still be required, albeit at a reduced level, for example to implement surveys to measure co-benefits, investigating fuel stacking and equipment maintenance, so this cost is not totally removed.
Data security throughout the whole data chain is paramount to the integrity of any carbon credit claims. This includes within the monitoring device, through any communication path and within IT systems. Implementing secure data paths requires specialist knowledge which may add to the complexity and cost for a project developer implementing dMRV systems, although more standardised platforms and equipment are becoming available helping to reduce this burden.
Comparative Research
MECS recently commissioned AGS Carbon Advisory to conduct a study of the workings of the MMECD. AGS has made a comparative analysis of MMECD with other methodologies such as Technologies and Practices to Displace Decentralized Thermal Energy Consumption (TPDDTEC) v4.0 and the draft Comprehensive Lowered Emissions Assessment and Reporting Methodology (CLEAR). Their key findings indicate that the current MMECD methodology provides a robust yet conservative framework that yields high quality Emission Reductions with strong environmental integrity, especially in comparison to other methodologies available to the cooking sector. AGS also identifies opportunities to further improve this sector-best methodology, including clarifying how key procedures and inputs can be applied consistently across different projects and project developers and imposing requirements for a more rigorous approach to sampling.
Conclusion
Digital technology has created the opportunity for the availability and maintenance of high-quality data which leads to integrity and transparency in monitoring, reporting and verification of modern energy cooking projects, and this can be a valuable resource in restoring the confidence of buyers in the sector. There is a determination from leading market participants that past mistakes in overclaiming should not be repeated. Good working practices around the use of digital technologies can help to ensure that integrity standards can be upheld, and different parties should continue to cooperate to make sure these are respected in practice and maintained going forward. Inevitably, new technologies and related practices will arise which can offer scope for further improvements in market practices, and it will be important to ensure that these uphold high integrity standards at the same time as delivering greater efficiencies.
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1: “A review of the standards, methodologies, technical needs and available resources related to digital
monitoring, reporting and verification for modern cooking devices in the context of carbon finance” Little et al. (2023).