The sun is shining on metered and measured approaches for clean cooking

By Prof. Matt Leach, Gamos and MECS.

As we head out of the bleak northern hemisphere winter, in the past month the sun has started shining particularly brightly on digital approaches to metering and measuring clean cooking. As one of the team in MECS that proposed the metered method to Gold Standard some years ago and then worked with Climate Impact Partners and ATEC to validate it, it is particularly pleasing to see the press releases and news reports that are flowing thick and fast. There is a momentum of reporting about positive developments both for the integrity of carbon credits and for the increasing scale of eCooking and other modern energy cooking services leveraging them.

A previous MECS blog set out the advantages of metered and measured approaches, the development by MECS of the first methodology based on it with CIP and Gold Standard (the MMECD) and early evidence of its commercial success in the Voluntary Carbon Market. The blog also reported that derivatives of the MMECD were being implemented in other methodologies including CLEAR and by Verra (whose new methodology has now been published as VM0050 for Energy Efficiency and Fuel-Switch Measures in Cookstoves).

Exciting Developments in the Past Month

A wave of announcements shows the momentum behind metered and measured approaches:

CCA launched a Buyer’s Guide to Cookstove Credits at the New York Stock Exchange two weeks ago. MECS’s Simon Batchelor made some interesting observations here, welcoming the Buyer’s Guide and relating it to our own activities and to the wider clean cooking agenda.

The Guide builds upon the Principles for Responsible Carbon Finance in Clean Cooking. Within the Integrity principle, a key term is that projects should be accurately monitored, focusing on using metering or fuel sales records. Writing about the Guide’s launch, CCA’s Feisal Hussain  identified 6 big themes that emerged from discussions around the edges of the event, with a wide range of market players. The first is the importance of clean cooking offering rapid routes to high integrity credits with associated development benefits; the second theme is that high quality data from advanced monitoring is key to creating buyer confidence. This has been reinforced by the recent announcement by the ICVCM…

The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon market last week announced that three cookstove  methodologies meet its high-integrity Core Carbon Principles: two of those are the MMECD and the new Verra VM0050, with the third being the updated version of the older GS meth TPDDTEC. The approvals depend on certain conditions (eg use of appropriate fNRB values), and with these, metered and measured projects  will be eligible for the coveted CCP label, showing they are ‘best in class’.

This objective seal of approval by ICVCM for metered and measured methodologies now sits alongside the achievement last year of the first ever ‘A’ rating for a cookstove project by the rating agency BeZero, for EcoSafi using MMECD.

Expanding Digital eCooking Projects and Global Recognition

The earliest adopters of the MMECD were eCooking  projects in Asia (MEC in India, ATEC in Bangladesh and Cambodia). Now there is also rapid growth in projects across Africa, eg the recent announcements by  BURN for eCooking roll-out using  digital methods in multiple countries. And last week UpEnergy announced the first issuance of credits using the MMECD in Africa, for eCooking in Uganda and Tanzania, with Ghana and Zambia close behind.

The Role of Metered and Measured Approaches in Paris Agreement Article 6

So far this is all about achievements in the Voluntary Carbon Market.  However, recent developments show the centrality of metered and measure methodologies within the bilateral mechanism article 6.2 of the Paris agreement too. Last month saw the  announcement of a major investment to scale Supamoto’s IoT-enabled pellet gasifier stove in Zambia, linked to an Article 6.2 credit programme based on a version of the MMECD. We also had the announcement by ATEC  of their first article 6.2 project for induction stoves  in Malawi, again based on the MMECD, and we know that development is underway in a number of other countries. While article 6.2 participants are free to agree any methodology they like, the government parties have a clear intention to seek high integrity, and hence the metered and measured approaches are an obvious choice. 

Recognising the opportunity for evolving best practices in Article 6.2 methodologies, I led development of  a specialised MMECD version for these projects. This includes additional guidance, updated parameter recommendations, and an annotated ER calculator, with plans for continuous refinement as new evidence emerges and Article 6.4 standards evolve.

Looking Ahead: Integrated Planning and Scaling Clean Cooking

The evident link between high integrity and metered and measured approaches provides particular opportunities for electric cooking, given the relatively simpler task of metering electricity. MECS has long-promoted the importance of combining clean cooking planning with electricity system planning within an integrated approach to energy and SDG7, and so it was great to see CCA also starting to promote such integrated planning, as well as eCooking generally, given the exciting potential achievements coming with Mission 300 in Africa.

Although the recent article from Rockefeller points to integrated planning, and says “Electric Cooking (eCooking): As the grid and off-grid electricity become more reliable and affordable, efficient appliances like induction stoves and electric pressure cookers can help families transition to cleaner cooking”,  there still seems to be a hesitancy about ensuring clean cooking is planned as part of electrification.  I have heard Damilola Ogunbiyi, lead of SEforAll. but previously first female Managing Director of the Nigerian Rural Electrification Agency where she initiated the Nigerian Electrification Project, say that when she looks back she regrets that they didn’t include kitchen appliances as part of that roll out.  They completed the access project and then thought about cooking!   That would have been a win-win-win (households reducing their monthly outgoings, cooks not breathing in smoke, time saved, lower climate emissions, mitigation of deforestation while at the same time utilities would have greater demand which would have led to better profitability, etc). 

While carbon finance is a great contribution to the future mitigation of climate emissions from cooking with biomass fuels,  planning for the use of electricity in kitchens as part of any programme of access and increased connections is equally beneficial and maybe better.  When M300 talks about embracing clean cooking in their work, we really hope Damilola’s voice is heard, that it’s true ‘integrated planning’, leveraging investment in electrical infrastructure  and that they don’t just mean a parallel programme of other fuels for cooking using the same delivery partners.

However, to return to the carbon question, efforts are now focused on defining the methodologies that will be permitted under the multilateral Paris article 6.4, where scale will be essential to deliver on NDCS as well as overall ambitions for SDG7. Whatever the final structure of meths relevant for clean cooking, we can expect to see a vital role for digital cooking usage data, securing high integrity carbon credits as well as wider SDG benefits with efficient and accurate digital reporting around these. This will also have a virtuous cycle by delivering clear data for future integrated energy planning and enable that leveraging of the existing and planned electrical networks.  It is a wonderful outcome of our research that this is now being embraced by so many.

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Featured image: Cooking on an induction stove. Image courtesy of ATEC.