Assessing the Climate Impacts of Cookstove Projects: Issues in Emissions Accounting

This policy brief by the Stockholm Environment Institute examines the methodologies used to measure and verify emission reductions in improved cookstove projects to ensure their environmental integrity and attract carbon finance. It identifies technical challenges in calculating biomass fuel savings, monitoring stove usage, and determining the fraction of non-renewable biomass, while noting that current methodologies often overlook significant non-CO2 climate benefits like black carbon reduction.

• Carbon finance is viewed as a mechanism to scale up improved cookstove projects, with the potential volume of credits estimated to exceed 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year.
• Emission reductions are calculated using four factors: biomass fuel savings, the fraction of non-renewable biomass, net calorific value, and an emission factor for the fuel. Each factor presents technical challenges; for example, the Water Boiling Test (WBT) is often preferred by developers over the Kitchen Performance Test (KPT) because it is cheaper and easier, despite the KPT being more robust for gauging actual fuel savings.
• Determining the fraction of non-renewable biomass (fNRB) is a major challenge. In May 2012, the CDM Executive Board issued national default factors for nearly 60 countries, with over 80% of these values exceeding 80%. However, critics argue these may be based on poor-quality data and fail to account for local geographic and climatic variations.
• The use of fossil fuel emission factors as a 'workaround' to avoid crediting for increased carbon stocks (prohibited by the Marrakech Accords) is criticized as unscientific and may lead to the under-crediting of projects.
• Current methodologies largely ignore non-CO2 emissions. While the Gold Standard allows credits for methane and nitrous oxide, most do not. Black carbon, which constitutes an estimated 25% of global emissions from solid biomass used for cooking and heating, is not yet quantified or credited despite offering high net benefits per cost.

APA

Lee, C., Chandler, C., Lazarus, M., & Johnson, F. X. (2013). Assessing the Climate Impacts of Cookstove Projects: Issues in Emissions Accounting. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/sei-pb-2013-cdm-cookstoves.pdf

Chicago

Lee, Carrie, Chelsea Chandler, Michael Lazarus, and Francis X. Johnson. Assessing the Climate Impacts of Cookstove Projects: Issues in Emissions Accounting. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2013. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/sei-pb-2013-cdm-cookstoves.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Lee |first1=Carrie |last2=Chandler |first2=Chelsea |last3=Lazarus |first3=Michael |last4=Johnson |first4=Francis X. |title=Assessing the Climate Impacts of Cookstove Projects: Issues in Emissions Accounting |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=2013 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/sei-pb-2013-cdm-cookstoves.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{lee2013assessing, author = {Lee, Carrie and Chandler, Chelsea and Lazarus, Michael and Johnson, Francis X.}, title = {{Assessing the Climate Impacts of Cookstove Projects: Issues in Emissions Accounting}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2013}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/sei-pb-2013-cdm-cookstoves.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }