The CCA Buyer's Guide Launched at the New York Stock Exchange

By Dr Simon Batchelor, OBE, Loughborough University

The Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA), in collaboration with 13 other Responsible Carbon Finance Organizations, launched at the New York stock exchange The Buyer’s Guide to High-Quality Cookstove Carbon Credits. The guide, launched last week, aims to improve the transparency, integrity, and effectiveness of cookstove carbon credit projects by helping buyers make informed investments in high-quality carbon credits. It provides best practices, methodologies, and decision-making frameworks for corporate buyers, NGOs, and investors looking to support clean cooking initiatives while achieving measurable climate and social impacts. It’s a good helpful step forward to high integrity carbon finance, and we are happy to point to it. 

Explaining carbon finance is not easy. At a recent climate parliament discussing eCooking some MPs became frustrated that the explanations were too technical, and they wanted a simple guide. We are working on that but in the meantime, this report offers a mid-point between the strongly technical explanations of our carbon pages, and the simplification required for buyers to understand. Our colleague Malcolm Bricknell (MECS ILM) contributed to the report alongside the many authors and contributors, and we think this will be a good resource for the clean energy sector.  

The CCA Guide notes that carbon credits offer a solution by financing the distribution of efficient stoves and cleaner fuels to replace traditional wood-burning and charcoal stoves. These projects generate verified emission reductions (VERs) that corporations and organizations can purchase to offset their own carbon footprints.  However, concerns over credit quality, transparency, and effectiveness have led to a demand for stricter standards.

The guide emphasizes three key principles for ensuring high-quality cookstove credits:

1-Large and Immediate Emission Reductions

To be considered high quality, a cookstove carbon credit must meet robust criteria in environmental, social, and governance aspects. We think it’s important and a key headline to note that cookstove projects are particularly valuable for near-term climate impact because they generate measurable reductions within 1-2 years- a faster impact than reforestation projects, which can take 10-15 years. The reductions can come via either:

• Efficiency-Based Credits: Generated when new cookstoves significantly reduce fuel consumption, lowering CO₂ emissions, or by
• Fuel Switch Credits: Created when households transition to cleaner fuels, such as LPG, ethanol, pellets, biogas, or electricity.

At MECS we tend to focus on fuel switching opportunities. MECS has placed a focus on leveraging the investments that have led to access and reliability gains in electricity generation, particularly Asia, which can be used to support the adoption of energy efficient electric cooking. Fuel switching from biomass to renewable energy generated electricity has clear carbon benefits. However although that’s our focus, we acknowledge that a multi fuel approach is required depending on the context, for example our recent cooperation with the AU to produce the ‘Sustainable Scaling’ report. We do very little core research on efficiency-based reductions of biomass consumption, but the CCA Guide notes that there are efficiency possibilities. They state that since baseline emissions from traditional cooking are high, even improved cookstove projects can cut CO₂ emissions by up to 70% per household making them a possible carbon offset tool. Presumably mindful of the work at Berkeley, they later go on to discuss how such reductions can be measured, and their new CLEAR method seeks to put rigour and evidence front and centre for carbon finance.

2-Strong Co-Benefits for People and Nature

Beyond carbon savings, clean and modern cooking initiatives deliver significant social and environmental benefits. The CCA report notes that this might include:

• Public Health: Reducing indoor air pollution lowers respiratory diseases and premature deaths-saving up to 13,000 lives annually per large-scale project.
• Gender Empowerment: Women and girls spend 34+ minutes per day collecting firewood, time that can be redirected toward education or income-generating activities.
• Deforestation Reduction: Approximately 225 million hectares of forest could be saved by transitioning to clean cooking by 2030.
• Poverty Alleviation: Families using efficient stoves save up to $100 annually on fuel costs, easing financial burdens.

It should be noted that there is considerable debate about ‘deforestation’ based on definitions of ‘forests’ and there is an imminent blog and briefing note on this and the fraction of Non-Renewable Biomass coming on the MECS website. It is interesting that at times the CCA Guide contrasts the more immediate savings of cooking transitions with those related to replanting trees – there are several places where tree planting seems to be dismissed as inferior to cooking projects that are based around the prevention of deforestation. Nevertheless, the argument is clear – emission reductions via clean cooking projects also support a wide range of additional co-benefits that other emission reduction projects cannot claim. The guide quotes an example from the Simoshi School-Based Clean Cooking Program in Uganda where cookstove carbon finance supports health, education, and the environment while reducing 13,467 tCO₂e per year.

3-Enhanced Credibility and Monitoring Standards

The guide notes that some projects have been criticised for overselling of credits due to inflated baseline assumptions. There have also been significant verification delays and price volatility, but it is clear that the market is now evolving toward real-time crediting models, integrating MRV technologies.

This is where MECS has been focusing its work on carbon finance. We have proposed and developed metered methods and proposed the use of Internet of Things Technology. We have recently evaluated the MMECD and looked at how it could be applied to Article 6 work. The buyers guide suggests this is key to prevent greenwashing and double-counting, and that strict monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems must be in place. High-quality projects should adhere to:

• Kitchen Performance Tests (KPTs): Measuring real-world fuel consumption.
• Fraction of Non-Renewable Biomass (fNRB): Ensuring only truly additional credits are generated.
• Smart Sensors & AI-Based Tracking: Advanced cookstove projects now integrate IoT technology to track actual stove usage.

The buyers guide acknowledges that electric stoves, particularly induction and IoT-enabled electric stoves, provide a particularly efficient alternative to traditional biomass or charcoal stoves. In settings where electricity is affordable and reliable, electric cooking devices outperform biomass stoves in terms of efficiency and emission reductions.

In discussing this, the guide cites the EcoSafi Program in Kenya, as the first in Africa to issue credits under Gold Standard’s Metered and Measured Energy Cooking Devices (MMECD) methodology, ensuring tracking of stove use through fuel consumed. EcoSafi is a highly efficient gasifier stove that tracks data on the sales of the fuel, i.e. a measure of the fuel consumed. Our partner ATEC who, worked with us to develop the MMECD alongside Climate Partners and Gold Standard, was an early user of the MMECD in Asia and more recently in Africa, but it was possibly  Microenergy Credits who were the first to log a programme with Gold Standard  and as such were perhaps the first to use this method in the world (albeit in Asia not Africa). I guess it doesn’t matter who was the first, but rather we should be glad that the MMECD is being used and is showing a path forward to high integrity carbon finance. The report has a good timeline of how these various methods have come into the market and positions CLEAR as the latest version of a 20-year working timeline.

And of course, we have also worked closely with BURN Manufacturing, which as the guide notes, has started distributing IoT-enabled induction stoves in Ghana. Through live digital monitoring, they track usage patterns and adjust consumer engagement strategies to increase adoption rates by 25 percentage points.

The buyers guide notes that as grid expansion and renewable energy investments grow, electric cooking is expected to play a larger role in clean cooking initiatives.  We will certainly see this within Mission 300.  The report also suggests that blended finance models could support the scale-up of electric cooking by combining carbon finance with subsidies and consumer financing mechanisms to make eCooking more accessible.

So, we welcome this valuable Buyer’s Guide. For corporates and industries in developed economies who wish to offset their carbon footprint, it will be an excellent resource.

The guide presents a five-step decision-making framework to help these buyers navigate their engagement in the carbon market. 

Step 1: Develop a Climate Strategy

Organizations must define their climate objectives, ensuring that carbon credits are used to complement internal emissions reductions rather than replace them. Following frameworks like Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) ensures alignment with global best practices.

Step 2: Define a Procurement Strategy

Buyers should determine their budget and whether they seek direct investments in projects or aggregated portfolios. They should choose between short-term spot purchases or long-term Emission Reduction Purchase Agreements (ERPAs), and engage in beyond-value-chain mitigation (BVCM) strategies to maximize impact.

Step 3: Define Project Eligibility Criteria

High-quality cookstove projects must meet ICVCM’s Core Carbon Principles (CCPs), the Responsible Carbon Finance Code of Conduct and the Paris Agreement’s Article 6 Rules for Carbon Trading. Buyers should also prioritize projects that support gender equity, poverty reduction, and ecosystem restoration.

Step 4: Assess the Quality of Cookstove Credits

Buyers must conduct due diligence by verifying methodologies (e.g., Verra, Gold Standard), reviewing MRV systems and developer track records, Using third-party credit rating agencies (e.g., BeZero, Sylvera).

Step 5: Report Use and Keep Claims Credible

Transparency is essential for avoiding reputational risks. Companies must ensure they follow Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity (VCMI) principles, publicly disclose credit retirements, and distinguish between net-zero alignment and voluntary contributions.

The Buyer’s Guide seeks to attract buyers by noting that there is a rising demand for cookstove credits.   They say that the price of cookstove credits has historically been higher than most offset categories due to their immediate impact and strong co-benefits. Indeed, Cookstove carbon credit retirements have apparently doubled in 2024, surpassing 17 million tonnes. And with CORSIA regulations requiring airline emissions reductions, cookstove credits could supply up to 57% of eligible carbon offsets in the first phase (2024-2026), this seems consistent with some of the recent ATEC reporting.

The Buyers’ Guide to High-Quality Cookstove Carbon Credits provides corporate buyers, NGOs, and policymakers with a roadmap for engaging in the clean cooking carbon market responsibly. By following rigorous procurement and monitoring standards, buyers can ensure their investments drive genuine climate impact, promote social equity, and foster long-term sustainability. A valuable contribution to the literature.

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Featured Image- credit: Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA), X social media post, Feb 28^th 2025. Used under Fair Use Act.