Four billion US dollars per year by 2030: that’s what it would take to replace traditional cooking stoves in developing countries with systems that consume less energy and are harmful to health. A tool, currently imperfect, could help mobilize this financing: carbon credits.
“Without carbon markets, the 2030 objective will be difficult to achieve,” says the International Energy Agency (IEA), which brings together governments, institutions, companies and financing organizations on Tuesday in Paris to a summit on clean cooking methods.
Why replace these systems?
Some 2.3 billion people, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, rely on rudimentary cooking systems, often three stones around a hearth, that burn wood, charcoal or dung to cook their food.
In addition to smoke, which causes around 3.7 million premature deaths per year due to particles released into the air, their use is responsible for nearly 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a landmark study published in Nature Climate Change.
Emissions come partly from combustion, but also from deforestation caused by the collection of wood in areas under pressure.
Many projects, public or private, aim to replace these cooking stoves with more efficient cookers or mini-stoves, that is to say more closed in order to dissipate less heat and use less fuel (coal , wood, fuel oil), while reducing harmful fumes; or even by systems operating with “greener” energy sources (electricity, biogas, bioethanol, pellets).
The cost of one of these mini-stoves is a few dozen dollars, unaffordable for the poorest.
How is the carbon credit generated?
More than 1,300 of these projects, most in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, have generated carbon credits over the past two decades – a credit equivalent to one tonne of CO2 removed or prevented from re-entering the atmosphere thanks to a project – according to the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project database which lists the vast majority of carbon credit projects in the world.
Their progress is one of the fastest on the carbon credit market, according to researchers at the University of Berkeley.
The replacement of cooking stoves represents 5.5% of carbon credits put on the market worldwide, or 108 million credits and just as many tonnes of CO2 supposedly “avoided”. This represents the equivalent of a quarter of the annual emissions of a country like France.
More than 53 million of these credits were purchased and used mainly by companies to offset their own CO emissions.2the rest is still technically in circulation.
Their price is on average a few dollars per ton when experts recommend exceeding $100 to make investments in the transition attractive.
Part of this money is supposed to return to local populations.
Risks of greenwashing?
Three Berkeley researchers looked at the methodologies of around fifty projects, including the largest providers of carbon credits. Their conclusion is clear: the number of carbon credits emitted is nine times greater than the number of tonnes of CO2 actually “avoided”.
In question, methodological biases which overestimate CO emissions2 “avoided” thanks to new systems, but also their regular use by populations, who sometimes continue to favor their traditional methods.
“It’s not all about mobilizing the money, we have to make it effective with public policies to encourage people to use these stoves,” we tell the AIE.
The Berkeley study recommends following the World Health Organization’s definition of “clean” cooking stoves, which excludes coal and kerosene systems as well as certain wood-burning models.
Quantum Commodity Intelligence and carbon credit rating agency Calyx Global are calling for caution on this recommendation, saying it could exclude populations living in remote rural areas even though the benefits to their health are considerable. beyond just climate objectives.