Clean Cooking Carbon Markets: Overview of the Project Development Process

Carbon markets can offer an important source of revenue for clean cooking projects. These results-based revenues are pivotal to clean cooking project development and enabling clean cooking programs to operate at scale.

Carbon markets have facilitated considerable investments in the clean cooking sector, especially over the last three years. The year 2023 saw record carbon credit issuances from clean cooking activities, despite rocky market conditions. 

But the journey towards successful carbon certification is complex. Projects must demonstrate that they meet the certification requirements set out by carbon standards and hire independent third parties to validate/verify the performance of the project. Carbon finance is therefore only attractive to projects that can deliver a scale large enough to overcome these costs and meet the requirements of carbon standards for certification.  

This note seeks to inform clean cooking ventures on the steps associated with bringing a clean cooking initiative to the carbon market. It offers insight into key considerations that prospective project developers need to be aware off when considering carbon financing for their programs, including the steps associated with the carbon asset development cycle, key eligibility criteria, and associated costs and timelines. 

Interested in related resources for clean cooking project developers? We recently released a cost-benefit model for clean cooking in carbon markets and an overview of service providers and buyers.

Access the briefing note in our report series on the Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) website.