Verra’s New Cookstoves Methodology: Delivering Critical Climate Action and Supporting Local Communities—Today

• Climate action is urgently needed, and installing clean cookstoves is one of the most effective and beneficial ways to deliver it—along with many additional benefits for local communities. Clean cooking solutions result in quick and reliable emission reductions while also greatly improving people’s lives by protecting human health, greening the environment, and boosting socioeconomic well-being (e.g., reducing the time and labor needed for cooking).
• The implementation of clean cooking solutions depends on climate finance. The vast majority of clean cookstove users live in countries where finance to purchase and install these tools is scarce. Finance from carbon credits is the sole source of funding for many improved cookstove projects.
• Verra’s new cookstoves methodology, Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Methodology VM0050 Energy Efficiency and Fuel-Switch Measures in Cookstoves, v1.0, uses advanced and robust carbon accounting methods for quantifying the emission reductions from the use of clean cookstoves. Selling the carbon credits representing this impact can catalyze the needed finance for cookstove projects. VM0050 reflects best practices of project design and implementation. It consolidates and strengthens existing and previous methodologies, addressing aspects that have recently been publicly criticized. It incorporates streamlined monitoring approaches, scientifically robust methods of determining key parameters, and updated default values for various ex ante parameters. As a result, this methodology represents an approach that advances clean cookstove use as a climate solution and provides critical support to local communities today.

Globally, around 2.3 billion people (i.e., one-third of the global population) have no access to clean cooking facilities. Instead, they rely on traditional techniques that use solid biomass, kerosene, or coal as their primary cooking fuel. These practices pose significant challenges to millions of households globally by impacting people’s health, the environment, socioeconomic development, and gender equality. Addressing these challenges requires concerted and long-term efforts to promote the adoption of clean cooking technologies and related practices and fuels. If successful, the resulting sustainable cooking practices can protect human health and the environment, while also greatly improving the socioeconomic well-being of communities.

The ability to use clean cooking methods requires that a household has reliable access to, and uses as their primary cooking methods, fuels and equipment that significantly limit or avoid the release of pollutants harmful to human health. Clean cooking saves people (mainly women and girls) significant time and labor otherwise spent on gathering firewood. This enables them to engage in other income-generating or educational activities to improve their livelihoods. A reduced demand for firewood also helps conserve local forests and biodiversity.

Clean cookstoves include improved biomass cookstoves, electric stoves, ethanol stoves, biodigester stoves, and solar thermal/photovoltaic stoves. The use of these cookstoves can lead to greenhouse gas emission reductions through two pathways: fuel switching (transition from carbon-intensive to cleaner fuels and related practices) and energy efficiency (adopting improved cookstoves and related technologies/practices that use less energy).

Carbon markets play a crucial role in supporting the implementation of clean cookstove projects. By enabling project developers/proponents to generate carbon credits based on the emission reductions they achieve through the distribution of improved cookstoves, the market provides a mechanism for financing these approaches.

Because improved cookstove projects are primarily based in countries where users have reduced purchasing power, finance from carbon credits is often their sole source of revenue and is essential for sustaining these projects. This finance can also subsidize end users’ purchase of cookstoves, since the anticipated sale of carbon credits provides some certainty around future income streams.

Accurate accounting of greenhouse gas emission reductions from the use of clean cookstoves is complex. To credibly quantify the impact of cookstove projects and enable projects to generate high-integrity carbon credits, carbon accounting methodologies must include data collation and monitoring approaches that take into consideration a diverse range of cooking technologies and practices, fuel types, and local usage/behavior patterns.

With more than 250 cookstove projects registered in Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Program, Verra is committed to upholding the continuous flow of this critically needed finance. It therefore recently released a new cookstoves methodology for credibly quantifying the emission reductions achieved by clean cookstoves, which relies on the best-available science and technology.

 VM0050 provides a high-integrity approach to quantifying emission reductions from energy efficiency and fuel-switch measures (i.e., involving the replacement of fossil fuels and non-renewable biomass) in cookstoves. It addresses the need for projects to maintain continuous access to the carbon market, enables fair transition timelines for projects, and incorporates new and developing science and understanding of clean cookstove approaches, while also taking into consideration criticisms and the need for the methodology’s continued evolution.

This methodology reflects current best practices of project design and implementation in distributed thermal energy generation. It also incorporates streamlined monitoring approaches such as direct measurement techniques (e.g., stove use monitors, fuel weight sensors, electricity meters), scientifically robust approaches for the determination of key parameters (like baseline fuel consumption, fraction of non-renewable biomass [f_NRB], and usage rate of project cookstoves), and updated default values for various ex ante parameters.

Moreover, it covers a broad set of activities and cooking technologies/practices and consolidates and strengthens the following existing or now-inactivated cookstove methodologies:

• AMS-I.E.: Switch from non-renewable biomass for thermal applications by the user (external)
• AMS-II.G.: Energy efficiency measures in thermal applications of non-renewable biomass (external)
• VMR0006 Energy Efficiency and Fuel Switch Measures in Thermal Applications, v1.2 (external)
• VMR0011 Switch from Non-Renewable Biomass For Thermal Applications by the User, v1.0 (external)

For these reasons, VM0050 advances the market for cookstove projects and credits.

Apart from catalyzing critically needed climate change mitigation, the implementation of this methodology will lead to significant benefits for local communities and their environments, improving livelihoods and gender equity, benefiting health and air quality, and preserving ecosystems.

To estimate emission reductions from activities reducing the consumption of biomass, cookstove projects need to assess the fraction of non-renewable biomass (i.e., the proportion of wood that, when harvested for firewood or for any other purpose, cannot be naturally regenerated in a particular region). VM0050, v1.0 provides different options to determine this fraction, including UNFCCC national default f_NRB values, a conservative global default value of 30% from TOOL33 Default values for common parameters (external), or the use of TOOL30 Calculation of the fraction of non-renewable biomass (external) combined with a 26% uncertainty discount factor.

To further support a robust quantification method for cookstove projects, all projects using VM0050 will undergo Verra’s new and robust risk-based approach (RBA) for project reviews. Under the RBA, Verra classifies projects based on risk, enabling it to tailor the intensity of project reviews and focus resources where they are most needed. This ensures a specific focus on high-risk projects, including a close review of f_NRB values in cookstove projects.

Verra recently released corrections and clarifications to VM0050. These contain changes that are designed to facilitate the methodology’s ability to meet the criteria of the Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) Assessment Framework, published by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM). The corrections and clarifications strengthen VM0050’s alignment with the Comprehensive Lowered Emissions Assessment and Reporting (CLEAR) methodology by the Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA).

Moreover, Verra is committed to reviewing—and considering for inclusion in the VCS Program—other approaches under development, like the Modeling Fuelwood Savings Scenarios (MoFuSS) model for determining the fraction of non-renewable biomass for project-specific use. The MoFuSS model for project-specific use has been included in the CLEAR methodology.

Verra believes that the MoFuSS tool includes a robust and credible approach for the determination of f_NRB. Until the MoFuSS tool has been widely reviewed and endorsed, TOOL30 combined with a 26% uncertainty discount represents a reasonable path forward to determine more granular local f_NRB values (which are not captured in national or global defaults) to ensure continuous market access for cookstove projects.

Verra is also considering the future adoption of the marginal f_NRB approach, which determines the fraction of non-renewable biomass savings directly linked to the specific intervention instead of using an average. This is still in the early stages of development and approval.

If any of these approaches meet Verra’s rigorous assessment criteria, Verra will consider incorporating them into VM0050 at an opportune time.

While developing VM0050, Verra has been in active discussions with a number of experts in this space.

Verra has also supported the development of the CLEAR methodology by regularly reviewing and providing input on the methodology document and through knowledge sharing in workshops, virtual meetings, and physical sessions. VM0050 reflects many of the components of the CLEAR methodology, and the corrections and clarifications further strengthen the alignment of the two methodologies.

Verra has submitted VM0050 for assessment under the Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) Assessment Framework of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market and is committed to achieving CCP eligibility.