Nigerian state launches Africa's largest cookstove carbon project

Nigeria's Lagos State kicked off Africa's largest clean cookstoves project June 2, which is expected to generate carbon credits under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism.

The program aims to deploy 80 million clean cookstoves across Nigeria while producing 1.2 billion mt of offsets that will be used both under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement, but also in the country's compliance carbon market.

At the launch event, Titilayo Oshodi, special adviser to the Lagos State Governor, said the distribution of the first 6 million cookstoves would begin later this month.

"We gather here to discuss another climate initiative and to witness the launch of a historic, game-changing project that will place Nigeria at the forefront of the compliance carbon markets under the Article 6.4 emission reductions framework," she added.

Under the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism, established under Article 6.4, an entity can reduce emissions in one country, have the reductions credited, and then sell them to another entity in another country.

Clean cooking

Clean cooking projects such as clean cookstoves help generate carbon credits. These credits are purchased by companies and governments in industrialized countries to help them meet their climate targets by financing projects in non-industrialized countries.

A bulk of clean cookstove programs are based in sub-Saharan Africa and India, where rural people still cook food on charcoal, firewood, coal, agricultural waste and animal dung, which emit harmful smoke, causing millions of premature deaths, and higher and harmful emissions.

Improved cookstoves, which use cleaner fuels, are considered more efficient and help cut emissions of harmful pollutants and greenhouse gases.

But these projects have faced criticism recently due to the overestimation of the benefits of some of these programs, leading to an over-issuance of carbon credits.

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, assessed credits for Household Devices at a record-low of $3/mtCO2e on June 2,.

Household-device credits reflect projects that lead to improved energy efficiency for individual communities, including clean cookstove projects, clean water access and improved building energy-efficiency initiatives.