NAIROBI, Kenya — For Nairobi-based business owner Mary Kavutha, morning cooking for her two young children looks drastically different today than it did two years ago. Where she once relied on a smoke-choking charcoal stove that cost roughly $1.15 per day in fuel, she now uses an induction cooker powered by electricity, with daily costs dropping to just 80 cents.
“It cooks much faster, and is much safer because I have young children,” Kavutha explained. “With charcoal there was always smoke in the house. Now I can cook indoors comfortably, and I spend much less.”
Kavutha’s shift to clean cooking is part of a growing movement across the African continent, where an estimated 1 billion people still depend on traditional charcoal and firewood for daily meal preparation. Data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) links household air pollution from these dirty fuels to roughly 850,000 premature deaths across Africa every year. Unlike many green transitions driven by climate advocacy, however, Kavutha and millions of other African households switched not for environmental reasons, but because carbon credit financing has made clean stoves far more affordable than their traditional alternatives.
This financing model works by allowing clean cooking companies to secure upfront capital based on projected future revenue from carbon emission reductions. This capital is then used to heavily subsidize the upfront cost of stoves for low-income households, turning what was once an out-of-reach luxury product into an accessible everyday necessity.
Clean cooking industry leaders are betting that despite longstanding criticism of carbon credit credibility, this financing model will become Africa’s most critical tool for expanding clean household energy and curbing deforestation driven by demand for firewood and charcoal. Recent momentum for the sector has been significant: in June, the IEA announced that Africa had secured $900 million in new financial commitments dedicated to scaling clean cooking technologies. Since the 2015 Paris Climate Summit, more than 30 governments representing 80% of Africans without access to clean cooking have rolled out 121 new policy frameworks to support the transition, according to IEA data.
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu emphasized the urgency of the shift during an IEA clean cooking conference co-hosted in Dar es Salaam earlier this year, noting that “Clean cooking is not a luxury, but an everyday necessity affecting every household.” Her remarks followed the African Union’s 2023 Dar es Salaam Declaration on Clean Cooking, adopted by 30 African governments to formalize regional commitment to the transition.
Peter Scott, founder and CEO of Nairobi-based clean cookstove manufacturer BURN, described carbon finance as a transformative force for the sector. “The only way clean cooking is going to scale on the continent is through carbon project finance,” Scott said. “Governments earn revenue and customers get a product they would never have been able to afford without that subsidy.”
BURN, which has distributed more than 7.3 million stoves across 11 African countries, attributes its growth not to stove design innovation alone, but to its carbon-backed financing structure. “Our biggest innovation is not the stove itself, but the financing behind it,” Scott explained. “Without that financing, many families cannot afford to switch.”
The model works by cutting retail costs dramatically: an efficient biomass stove that would normally retail for $40 can cost end users as little as $5 after carbon credit subsidies. For higher-cost induction cookers like Kavutha’s, carbon credits are paired with flexible pay-as-you-go payment plans that spread costs across several months, making the technology accessible to households with limited upfront income. “Investors provide upfront capital that subsidizes the retail price of our stoves. In return, they receive revenue from carbon credits generated as households reduce their use of charcoal, wood and other polluting fuels,” Scott added.
Despite this progress, the carbon credit model still faces significant scrutiny over transparency, credibility, and structural challenges. In recent years, industry leaders have adopted strict new standards and advanced measurement technologies — including Bluetooth usage monitoring, digital emissions verification, and real-time usage tracking — to address past criticism of unproven or overstated emission reductions.
Critics still warn that overreliance on carbon credits to fund the clean cooking transition carries major risks. One high-profile setback came earlier this year, when leading Kenyan clean cooking firm Koko Networks — once held up as a poster child for Africa’s green transition — shut down in February after failing to secure required government authorization to sell carbon credits.
George Mwaniki, WRI Kenya representative and head of Air Quality for WRI Africa, argues that carbon money can support the transition but should not be its foundation. The core structural issue, he explains, is that carbon financing typically disburses funds after emission reductions are achieved, while clean cooking companies need upfront capital to manufacture and distribute stoves before any emission cuts are generated.
“Carbon financing is more of a second financing source,” Mwaniki said. “That creates a problem for clean-cooking companies as they need money to manufacture and distribute equipment before they can generate the emissions reductions that ultimately produce carbon credits. If we depend wholly on carbon credits to support the transition, it will be extremely slow and will not happen at the pace that we need it to.”
Even with these shortcomings, the clean cooking transition is accelerating across the continent, as companies adapt their models to fit local economic and energy contexts. BURN, for example, has found electric induction cooking to be more viable in Kenya and Tanzania, while biomass stoves remain the preferred option for households in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar. Other regional players are carving out local niches: Eco Safi operates across Uganda, Kenya, and Malawi offering forced-draft pellet stoves and renewable fuel made from agricultural waste; Rwandan firm BioMassters produces locally manufactured smokeless solar-powered pellet stoves and biomass-residue fuel; and Kigali-based ENEDOM produces low-cost briquettes made from agricultural waste.
For households like Kavutha’s, the policy and financing debates are secondary to the tangible improvements clean cooking has brought to daily life. “My kitchen is cleaner, my children are safer, and I spend less,” Kavutha said. “That is all that matters.”
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