Carbon credits for cookstoves: Trade-offs in climate and health benefits

Abstract

Cookstove projects have long been considered “win–win” development projects based on the multitude of benefits they can create. Carbon credits provide a new financing mechanism to fund such cookstove projects, but have been criticized as not always successfully meeting sustainable development goals. By drawing on previous literature this article critically looks at trade-offs between the maximization of climate and health benefits of cookstove projects in the context of carbon credits. It finds that carbon credits inherently account for climate benefits, but not for health. Therefore, clear objectives of cookstove interventions need to be defined prior to project implementation to insure the maximization of benefits in projects’ priority areas.

Complexities and challenges in the emerging cookstove carbon market in India

“…At the same time due to the varying performances of improved cookstoves (Freeman, 2012;Grieshop et al, 2011;Freeman and Zerriffi, 2012;Freeman and Zerriffi, accepted for publication) it would also be important to implement some kind of evaluation system or certification scheme so that consumers could judge the relative performance of different stoves as suggested by Shrimali et al (2011). This would allow consumers to discern potential tradeoffs of stove benefits, for example tradeoffs between health and fuel savings benefits for different stove models (Freeman, 2012;Grieshop et al, 2011;Freeman and Zerriffi, 2012). Thereby often neglected quantification of actual health benefits could be put under consideration by the consumer in addition to fuel savings at the point of sale.…”

“…It is important these campaigns would generate appeal around these products, for example framing them as being "as good as lpg" instead of "better than your traditional stove" (see Smith and Dutta, 2011 for further discussion around this topic). At the same time due to the varying performances of improved cookstoves (Freeman, 2012;Grieshop et al, 2011;Freeman and Zerriffi, 2012;Freeman and Zerriffi, accepted for publication) it would also be important to implement some kind of evaluation system or certification scheme so that consumers could judge the relative performance of different stoves as suggested by Shrimali et al (2011). This would allow consumers to discern potential tradeoffs of stove benefits, for example tradeoffs between health and fuel savings benefits for different stove models (Freeman, 2012;Grieshop et al, 2011;Freeman and Zerriffi, 2012).…”

“…There is also limited research around the impacts of carbon financing on the cookstove business models themselves, this being the focus of this study. A few studies have looked at tradeoffs between different benefits of carbon financed cookstove projects and their potential implications (Simon et al, 2012;Freeman, 2012;Freeman and Zerriffi, 2012;Freeman and Zerriffi, accepted for publication), with others focusing on commercialization efforts and business models for cookstove dissemination (Shrimali et al, 2011;Zerriffi, 2011;Bailis et al, 2009). Yet there hasn't been any peer-reviewed published works comprehensively examining the way carbon financing is changing approaches for cookstove dissemination for multiple types of organizations at the country scale.…”

A review of community co-benefits of the clean development mechanism (CDM)

“…Many researchers studying whether the CDM can deliver its dual goals found that there was therefore often-though notably, not in every case-a trade-off between emission reductions and sustainable development. (Ellis et al 2007, Schneider 2007, Sutter and Parreño 2007, Alexeew et al 2010a, Freeman and Zerriffi 2012, Torvanger et al 2013, Watts et al 2015. In other words, many projects that offered low-cost, high volume emissions were not necessarily those that maximize development benefits.…”

Quantifying the air quality-CO2 tradeoff potential for airports

“…Tradeoffs between air quality and climate have been studied in the context of household fuel usage (Bailis et al, 2005;Freeman and Zerriffi, 2012), power plants with carbon capture technologies (Koornneef et al, 2010;Tzimas et al, 2007), and alternative-fueled automobiles and marine vessels (Partanen et al, 2013;Lack et al, 2011;MacLean and Lave, 2000). Aardenne et al (2009) studied global climate change policies targeted at fuel and technology shifts and energy savings, and assessed the tradeoffs with human health and environmental impacts due to degraded air quality.…”