- Date
- 10th May 2021
- Categories
- General
10th May 2021.
ClimateCare, an organisation dedicated to tackling climate change and improving lives, has partnered with Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS), a UK Aid-funded programme to develop a new and innovative methodology to measure carbon emission reductions from the use of electric and other metered cooking devices.
Around the world, an estimated 2.4 billion1 people rely on firewood and charcoal for cooking. This accounts for 2%2 of global greenhouse gas emissions and one quarter of global black carbon emissions, the second largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide. In addition, up to four million3 people die prematurely every year from illnesses associated with exposure to smoke from polluting, open fires or inefficient stoves. Cleaner, more modern stoves and fuels reduce carbon emissions and lessen the burden of disease associated with Household Air Pollution.
Through this ground-breaking research work, MECS and ClimateCare seek to catalyse a potential 1 billion tonnes of avoided carbon dioxide emissions per annum and will greatly facilitate projects that provide communities with clean, energy-efficient cookers to measure the carbon reductions they deliver in an approach robust enough to be verified by Gold Standard. As a result, such projects will be able to issue and sell carbon credits to help fund their work, enabling them to scale and accelerating the transition to modern energy cooking services across the globe. The new and innovative methodology quantifies carbon emission reductions through direct measurement of energy consumed.
The team is excited to announce that it has submitted the proposed methodology to Gold Standard and has successfully progressed through the first stages of review and approval. The final phase of the standard review process will now include a period of public consultation to which interested and qualified carbon and clean cooking professionals are encouraged to provide feedback.
Patrick Colas, Director of ClimateCare’s Nairobi office commented: “We are delighted to once again be at the forefront of bringing carbon finance to scale clean cooking programmes around the world. We look forward to taking this to implementation with a pilot project once Gold Standard has approved the final methodology protocol. We hope that this methodology will take these projects to the next level by allowing carbon finance for even cleaner metered devices in future.”
ClimateCare has a long history in driving forward clean cooking. The profit with purpose firm lead authored the first Gold Standard improved cooking methodology; a methodology that has now been used across many projects and helped deliver more than 18.5 million tonnes of CO2 reductions. It also pioneered some of the first clean cooking projects funded by carbon finance.
Ed Brown, MECS Research Director, commented on recent developments: “We have been very pleased to cooperate with ClimateCare in developing this new approach which will use the smart data capabilities of modern energy cooking appliances to facilitate their carbon credit certifications. We hope and believe this will help to secure more carbon finance for modern energy cooking companies at lower costs and support their important contributions to the way we tackle climate change and improve the health of communities around the world.”
Once the methodology is approved, ClimateCare and MECS will take a pilot project through the registration and carbon credit issuance process.
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Notes to editors
ClimateCare
ClimateCare is dedicated to tackling climate change and improving lives. It aims to make our world a climate neutral one – where everyone takes full responsibility for their carbon footprint.
ClimateCare helps organisations take responsibility for their climate impact by financing, developing and managing carbon reduction projects across the world. Based in Oxford and Nairobi, ClimateCare helped create the voluntary carbon market and pioneered carbon finance for community development projects. Some of the largest carbon offsetting programmes in the world are delivered by ClimateCare.
Leading organisations and governments trust ClimateCare to solve complex climate and sustainability issues. With ClimateCare by their side, they can be confident on their journey to Net Zero.
As an award-winning profit with purpose Certified B Corporation, ClimateCare is recognised as setting the highest standards. Values and integrity are at the heart of all it does – just as they have been since it was founded in 1997. These values are underpinned by strong environmental credentials, a commercial focus on risk management and a proud record of delivering outstanding results for clients.
Find out more at www.climatecare.org
Follow ClimateCare on Twitter: @ClimateCare
MECS
Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) is a five-year programme funded by UK Aid (FCDO) which aims to spark a revolution through rapidly accelerating the transition from biomass to clean cooking on a global scale. By integrating modern energy cooking services into the energy planning, MECS looks to leverage investment in renewable energies (particularly regarding electricity access, both grid and off-grid) to address the clean cooking challenge. Modern energy cooking is Tier 5 clean cooking, and therefore MECS also supports new innovations in other relevant cooking fuels such as biogas, LPG (bio) and ethanol. The intended outcome is a market-ready range of innovations (technology and business models) which lead to improved choice of affordable, reliable and sustainable modern energy cooking services for consumers. We seek to have the MECS principles adopted in the SDG 7.1 global tracking framework and hope that participating countries will incorporate modern energy cooking services in energy policies and planning.
For more information, visit http://www.mecs.org.uk or follow MECS on Twitter at @UKMECS.
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